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From: blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What kinds of problems...
Keywords: Dhrystone, benchmark, i860
Message-ID: <15943@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 17 Mar 89 23:34:39 GMT
References: <471@estevax.UUCP> <15347@winchester.mips.COM> <7137@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
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In article <7137@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> mbkennel@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Matthew B. Kennel) writes:
>All this talk about integer benchmarks has left me wondering:
>
>how important is it to have fast integer processing, as compared
>to FP?

Like everthing else in benchmarks, "it depends".

For what I do, I'd be willing to trade a few orders of magnatude of
floating point performance for a few extra percent of integer performance.

I can't even remember how to declare a floating point variable in the
language I use the most at work.  Actually, floating point performance
is pretty important on the systems I use, since it is used to simulate
48 bit integer arithmatic....  (We don't have the source to that stuff,
so I can't compare speed with recoding it to do 32 bits at a time.)


>If I want to speed up floating point, how much do I need to speed
>up the integer unit?

Again, it depends...

-- 
Bob Larson	Arpa: Blarson@Ecla.Usc.Edu	blarson@skat.usc.edu
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