Monkey Ball is absurdly fun... even more so that the first two on GC thanks to all the party games. I love it!
Red Steal is a bit of a disappointment, but so far I have been enjoying it. The reviews are overly harsh considering it is a launch title. If you have to pick, Monkey Ball seems to be the most fun choice. I got both, and I am happy.
Since we are being picky here, I should point out that the "resistance" of a transistor is most definitely not constant. It is variable based on a lot of different physical parameters. Saying it is constant, is a very simplified view.:)
First of all, Intel owns the IP for the Alpha design. Second, it might be difficult to release a design that may be in a proprietary language that uses proprietary tools. The deisgn may not be in a Verilog or VHDL format.
Alpha is a fairly simple architecture. You can design a fairly modern Alpha (EV6-style) in a matter of months with two graduate students. I have seen it. If you are interested in designing an FPGA, it wouldn't be that hard.
This is part of an age old debate between RISC and CISC.
I would argue that variable length instructions have a very distinct advantage: They enable a very dense encoding of instructions (for x86, between 1 and 2 bytes per complex instruction) while in Alpha simple instructions are 4 bytes each. This not only decreases code size considerably, but it increases the hit rate per instruction in the instruction caches. This can be a large PERFORMANCE and POWER advantage. This is clearly a trade-off between extra decoding in the pipeline and a more efficient encoding in memory.
Furthermore, if the instruction cache is a trace cache like many modern x86 processors, the instructions are stored in an decoded RISC-like format which requires no decoding. So under the hood, the advantages of fixed format instructions can be realized in x86 processors as well.
What is wrong with little endian? This is just a preference. Does it really matter?
x86's biggest problem IMHO is that it has too many extensions that must be supported (MMX, classic stack FP) and it has many architectural artifacts that must be supported (undefined flags actually being "defined" by an earlier processor).
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Monkey Ball is absurdly fun... even more so that the first two on GC thanks to all the party games. I love it!
Red Steal is a bit of a disappointment, but so far I have been enjoying it. The reviews are overly harsh considering it is a launch title. If you have to pick, Monkey Ball seems to be the most fun choice. I got both, and I am happy.
Since we are being picky here, I should point out that the "resistance" of a transistor is most definitely not constant. It is variable based on a lot of different physical parameters. Saying it is constant, is a very simplified view. :)
People didn't really cry about Bill's BJ. They cried about him lying under oath which the basis for Bill getting impeached. HE LIED UNDER OATH.
This is beta software of something that only runs in the windows. There were already plenty of gmail programs that did this?
Why is this a Slashdot article?
Who cares?
First of all, Intel owns the IP for the Alpha design. Second, it might be difficult to release a design that may be in a proprietary language that uses proprietary tools. The deisgn may not be in a Verilog or VHDL format.
Alpha is a fairly simple architecture. You can design a fairly modern Alpha (EV6-style) in a matter of months with two graduate students. I have seen it. If you are interested in designing an FPGA, it wouldn't be that hard.
This is part of an age old debate between RISC and CISC.
I would argue that variable length instructions have a very distinct advantage: They enable a very dense encoding of instructions (for x86, between 1 and 2 bytes per complex instruction) while in Alpha simple instructions are 4 bytes each. This not only decreases code size considerably, but it increases the hit rate per instruction in the instruction caches. This can be a large PERFORMANCE and POWER advantage. This is clearly a trade-off between extra decoding in the pipeline and a more efficient encoding in memory.
Furthermore, if the instruction cache is a trace cache like many modern x86 processors, the instructions are stored in an decoded RISC-like format which requires no decoding. So under the hood, the advantages of fixed format instructions can be realized in x86 processors as well.
What is wrong with little endian? This is just a preference. Does it really matter?
x86's biggest problem IMHO is that it has too many extensions that must be supported (MMX, classic stack FP) and it has many architectural artifacts that must be supported (undefined flags actually being "defined" by an earlier processor).