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From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: speculative execution
Message-ID: <2763@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 11 Oct 90 12:32:55 GMT
References: <3432@bnr-rsc.UUCP> <1990Oct10.170424.21489@rice.edu> <3436@bnr-rsc.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 16


  Software can look at the global structure of a program and make
decisions based on that.

  Hardware can see what's happening at execution time, which may include
poor memory performance due to cycle stealing, variable FPU performance
for algorithms which are value sensitive, and other things which can
vary from run to run, or with data.

  If people would just drop the idea that either can solve all
performance problems, and start making hardware and software work better
together, then cost/performance would be improved with a lot lower noise
level.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
    VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix.