Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxg.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald
From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Don't look back...
Message-ID: <46500048@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 25 Feb 89 14:31:00 GMT
References: <4330@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Lines: 16
Nf-ID: #R:pt.cs.cmu.edu:4330:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:46500048:000:647
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Feb 25 08:31:00 1989


>Subject is possibility that microprocessors will beat Crays in
speed sometime soon. (For scalar code.)

Remember that Cray's are in a sense special purpose machines.
For some purposes (i.e. some type of calculations) a lowly 386 PC
will beat any single processor Cray. What purpose? Can you say
"integer remainder instruction" bound code? [Some math problems
fall in this category.] One of my most common programs almost
has my PC beating a Cray (but not quite). It is hopelessly scalar,
has gigantic arrays (of numbers which never get bigger than 200),
totally integer, and has just enough remainders to make the Cray
unhappy. 


Doug McDonald