George, Re: "I expected more from Tony and Paul, who know better, than to equate process line capability to chip MHz. Its a function of how much logic you want to accomplish in a cycle."
OK, you're right there. It is the MIPs, FLOPs, SPECints or SYSmarks that really count in benchmarking and comparing processors. They measure the work that gets done. However, in the microprocessor world, MHz has become king and most quoted parameter by far. It's sort of assumed that all the various processors will get the right amount of stuff accomplished in each CPU cycle. I mean, this is obvious stuff, that Megahertz is it now, rightly so, or not. What other parameter do all the x86, SPARC, MIPS and Alpha vendors quote first? System 390 is the only well known (is it still?) machine that quotes a throughput parameter, MIPs, first. Cycle time, or clock frequency is right behind it, though.
Well, in any case, George, stick around. This (and other) threads can help us keep on our toes, and that can't hurt (usually?).
Tony |
