I think you're on the right track but what's so different about this language versus any other language? You still need a translation table from your native language to this universal language.
A useful anology is the "universal language" of mathematics. If you go up to a Chinese person and say: "Twenty-three times eleven equals two hundred fifty-three." they won't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, whereas if you write down: "23 x 11 = 253" they can grok it no problem -- even if they might use a slightly different system (like * instead of x).
(Oddly enough, a couple years ago I read something about Wilkin's universal languages in a book picked at random while waiting in a library. Fascinating concepts...)
i would tell you bout the time i removd a metal cover stuck in the floppy drive using only a pair of scssors and a mchanicl pencil but i splled milk on my keybrd this mrning and am typing this with my mouse and some copy-paste skills -- i kid you not...
These chains of dependent instructions can also be parallelized with SIMD instructions. RC5 is not a measure of how good your processor is, it is a measure of how fast you can do ROTLs.
At the risk of sounding argumentative, how fast you can do ROTLs is a measure of how good your processor is, if doing ROTLs is what you need to do. Of course, Apple hypes this capability mercilessly, but they have some justification: SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) is, by definition, very good at situations when you want to do the same operation on a masses of data -- which is exactly the case when you're dealing with large graphics or audio, the Mac's traditional strong points.
I believe that altivec provides a SIMD version of ROTL which is why G4s do well.
For those of us who also happen to own a multi-processor machine and have been unable to run Mozilla as a native OS X app, it looks like part of the problem was with 10.0.4's MP support and will be fixed in 10.1. For more info, check out this bugzilla bug.
Perhaps this could even mean an end to the dial-up disconnection woes, as those, too, were MP related. (For those of you blissfully unaware, MP machines with a dial-up modem connection had a tendency to randomly drop said connection.)
All in all, very good news, especially since Apple appears to have listened to its customers and will be making the upgrade free.
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I think you're on the right track but what's so different about this language versus any other language? You still need a translation table from your native language to this universal language.
A useful anology is the "universal language" of mathematics. If you go up to a Chinese person and say:
"Twenty-three times eleven equals two hundred fifty-three."
they won't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, whereas if you write down:
"23 x 11 = 253"
they can grok it no problem -- even if they might use a slightly different system (like * instead of x).
(Oddly enough, a couple years ago I read something about Wilkin's universal languages in a book picked at random while waiting in a library. Fascinating concepts...)
i would tell you bout the time i removd a metal cover stuck in the floppy drive using only a pair of scssors and a mchanicl pencil but i splled milk on my keybrd this mrning and am typing this with my mouse and some copy-paste skills -- i kid you not...
While this may not quite fit, my favorite implementation of an algorithm has to be strcpy in C, whose hart is:
while (*src++ = *dst++);
If you fully understand this single line, you've past the "beginner" stage...
Also, a more-esoteric (though applicable) algorithm is the infamouse (and cool) swap of two variables without a third. Also a one-liner in C:
a ^= b ^= a ^= b;
or for the nit-picky:
if (a != b) a ^= b ^= a ^= b;
Anywho, these are the elegant examples that made me stick with Comp Sci long enough to learn RSA, et. al.
These chains of dependent instructions can also be parallelized with SIMD instructions. RC5 is not a measure of how good your processor is, it is a measure of how fast you can do ROTLs.
At the risk of sounding argumentative, how fast you can do ROTLs is a measure of how good your processor is, if doing ROTLs is what you need to do. Of course, Apple hypes this capability mercilessly, but they have some justification: SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) is, by definition, very good at situations when you want to do the same operation on a masses of data -- which is exactly the case when you're dealing with large graphics or audio, the Mac's traditional strong points.
I believe that altivec provides a SIMD version of ROTL which is why G4s do well.
Your belief is correct.
In contrast, [...]
The Pentium-4 takes 4 clocks to do a ROTL. Yikes.
Athlon takes a single cycle for the ROTL.
And the G4 takes a single cycle to do four ROTLs. It could do up to 16, but the RC5 code needs to rotate longs, not single bytes.
Anywho, it's bedtime, and I'm passed my daily linking allotment.
I don't have my docs with me, but there are three different threading systems which will take advantage of multiple processors.
Perhaps this is the doc you're looking for.
(And even if it's not, the diagrams are pretty cool...)
For those of us who also happen to own a multi-processor machine and have been unable to run Mozilla as a native OS X app, it looks like part of the problem was with 10.0.4's MP support and will be fixed in 10.1. For more info, check out this bugzilla bug.
Perhaps this could even mean an end to the dial-up disconnection woes, as those, too, were MP related. (For those of you blissfully unaware, MP machines with a dial-up modem connection had a tendency to randomly drop said connection.)
All in all, very good news, especially since Apple appears to have listened to its customers and will be making the upgrade free.