Posted by
Hemos
on from the conjecture-or-convinced dept.
vmircea writes "If you think clock speed is the most important measure of a processor, IBM's Bernie Meyerson wants you to reconsider. Meyerson, who heads research and development efforts for Big Blue's semiconductor group, says processor chip speed is old news. Go to ZDNet for the interview."
Same old
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Informative
Sounds like the same thing AMD has been trying to convince people of for the past 5 years, while Intel has been lengthening their processor pipelines to ramp up clockspeed while effectively lowering instructions per clock. Unfortunately no one bought it when AMD was saying it, so they had to come out with their PR naming system. Let's hope that at least IBM and their significantly bigger clout can change the picture. It seems like Intel's getting on board too, it seems there are rumblings of them moving their notebook M processors to the desktop as things have gone to hell when transitioning to 90nm fabrication. (In terms of power dissipation)
Most FPGAs are RAM-based. Reconfigure as much as you want. This includes every Xilinx FPGA made. And there are some Xilinx Spartan II parts under $10. Pretty cool!
There are only a few FPGAs which use any sort of non-volatile memory (Actel's Pro-Asic being one). Those would have a limited life.
-- "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Re-programmable
by
The+Conductor
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· Score: 4, Informative
There is a trade-off between speed, reliability, cost, and re-programmability.
SRAM types
Are re-programmable but require a rather slow serial load at boot-up. Reliability in embedded systems leaves something to be deisired since any brownout-induced glitch can create errors that are even worse (harder to recover from) than software glitches because wired logic doesn't have anything equivalent to code checksums or interrupt vectors. Well-paid FPGA designers are versed in the arcane art of self-verifying logic.
EEPROM types
Come alive at boot up and are much more resistant to glitches. Their performance, however, is slow. And you have limited (100,000 maybe) rewrite cycles.
Anti-fuse types
are made by Actel. They have the highest performance and best density. They come alive at boot up and are dead-nuts reliable under the worst of conditions; for example, properly qualified, they can survive the cosmic radiation in spacecraft that would leave other types toasted. The big drawback: the anti-fuse process, which works by melting diodes into short-circuits, is not eraseable.
Desktop systems (say, an add-on FPGA card) would be best served by SRAM types, since you already have a processor that requires gluttinous gobs of puritanically clean DC power. Basement hardware hackers would be better served by EEPROM or anitfuse types (depending on performance requirements), since they don't require super-expensive exotic design software.
Re:How CONVENIENT.
by
blamanj
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· Score: 3, Informative
Re:Power is not for PC
by
rve
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· Score: 3, Informative
It's not the programming language Java perse, but the writing in an interpreted language for an application server sitting on top of a virtual machine sitting on top of the operating system's HAL sitting on top of the hardware as opposed to writing a natively compiled app for the HAL as we did before.
But you're right, I'm not an enterprise Java developer.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like the same thing AMD has been trying to convince people of for the past 5 years, while Intel has been lengthening their processor pipelines to ramp up clockspeed while effectively lowering instructions per clock. Unfortunately no one bought it when AMD was saying it, so they had to come out with their PR naming system. Let's hope that at least IBM and their significantly bigger clout can change the picture. It seems like Intel's getting on board too, it seems there are rumblings of them moving their notebook M processors to the desktop as things have gone to hell when transitioning to 90nm fabrication. (In terms of power dissipation)
> What other applications besides games really tax the CPU right now?
as a developer i want compilation to be a quick as possible.
also i make heavy use of vmware, which needs as much grunt as it can get.
nostrils
Most FPGAs are RAM-based. Reconfigure as much as you want. This includes every Xilinx FPGA made. And there are some Xilinx Spartan II parts under $10. Pretty cool!
There are only a few FPGAs which use any sort of non-volatile memory (Actel's Pro-Asic being one). Those would have a limited life.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
There is a trade-off between speed, reliability, cost, and re-programmability.
SRAM types
Are re-programmable but require a rather slow serial load at boot-up. Reliability in embedded systems leaves something to be deisired since any brownout-induced glitch can create errors that are even worse (harder to recover from) than software glitches because wired logic doesn't have anything equivalent to code checksums or interrupt vectors. Well-paid FPGA designers are versed in the arcane art of self-verifying logic.
EEPROM types
Come alive at boot up and are much more resistant to glitches. Their performance, however, is slow. And you have limited (100,000 maybe) rewrite cycles.
Anti-fuse types
are made by Actel. They have the highest performance and best density. They come alive at boot up and are dead-nuts reliable under the worst of conditions; for example, properly qualified, they can survive the cosmic radiation in spacecraft that would leave other types toasted. The big drawback: the anti-fuse process, which works by melting diodes into short-circuits, is not eraseable.
Desktop systems (say, an add-on FPGA card) would be best served by SRAM types, since you already have a processor that requires gluttinous gobs of puritanically clean DC power. Basement hardware hackers would be better served by EEPROM or anitfuse types (depending on performance requirements), since they don't require super-expensive exotic design software.
Ummm. This isn't about Apple, it's about the semiconductor industry. As a matter of fact, Intel started saying the same thing a few months ago, and AMD has been making similar claims for years.
It's not the programming language Java perse, but the writing in an interpreted language for an application server sitting on top of a virtual machine sitting on top of the operating system's HAL sitting on top of the hardware as opposed to writing a natively compiled app for the HAL as we did before.
But you're right, I'm not an enterprise Java developer.