Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!mimsy!aplcen!osiris!phil
From: phil@osiris.UUCP (Philip Kos)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Proposed architecture characterization survey form
Message-ID: <1583@osiris.UUCP>
Date: 20 Apr 88 18:42:20 GMT
References: <2048@gumby.mips.COM>
Organization: Johns Hopkins Hospital
Lines: 38
Summary: terminology

Earl (and everyone who has responded so far) -

Great idea.  I have a suggestion about the terminology, though.  It's
probably too late to do anything about this, but what the hell...

In article <2048@gumby.mips.COM>, earl@mips.COM (Earl Killian) writes:
> First some definitions of my terminology are in order.... the rate is
> the time until you can start another instruction of the same
> type.

While I don't have a really big problem with this one, the common (to
me anyway) definition of "rate" is not a unit of time, but a measure of
something else reduced to standard units of time.  For instance, "one
SP floating add instruction can be started every cycle" is a "rate",
but "one cycle" is not.  What Earl suggests is actually the reciprocal
of my understood meaning, and seems to me something like using "Hz" to
indicate the period of a wave instead of its frequency.

It doesn't really make any difference to the discussion as long as
everyone understands what is meant by the term "rate".  However, anyone
walking in on the middle of a discussion where the meaning of "rate" is
assumed as above by all the participants is likely to get REALLY
confused if he assumes the "traditional" meaning.

Suggestions for better terms (or roots, anyway): "delay", "lag",
"hold", "period", etc. (you get the picture), probably qualified as
"type-interlock delay" or something to differentiate it from the basic
pipeline issue delay or whatever.  (I think that this differentiation
is probably what Earl was going for when he proposed the term "rate"
anyway.)

Of course, since I'm not contributing anything substantial to the
discussion, you should all ignore me anyway... :-)


                                                               Phil Kos
...!decvax!decuac!\                                 Information Systems
  ...!uunet!mimsy!aplcen!osiris!phil         The Johns Hopkins Hospital
...!allegra!/                                             Baltimore, MD