Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patrick E.McDaniel who wrote (53836)	4/17/1998 10:20:00 PM
From: Jeff Fox	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Patrick, re:"guy on the Dell thread claims there is a guy testing one now. I didn't think that was possible. Is it?" I am assuming you are referring to Merced... Not possible for silicon, but very possible for simulation or perhaps emulation... Simulation - Intel has most certainly developed software simulators. This is where the Merced function is duplicated with a software program that itself reads Merced code and processes results. These work well for finding bugs and bottlenecks, but are dreadfully slow, thousands of real clock cycles per simulated clock cycle. However it allows initial low level software development and will give reasonable performance predictions. Emulation - You can bet that Merced also exist in emulation. This is where the function is duplicated with FPLA's - field programmable logic chips. It likely takes thousands of FPLA chips to do Merced costing $ millions, but if your Intel, hey, chump change... Emulators might run as fast as 1/10 the the actual chip speed - fast enough to run real software suites in testing. Do you suppose Dell has their hands on one of Intel's emulators? Interesting thought! Jeff

To: Patrick E.McDaniel who wrote (53836)	4/18/1998 12:24:00 AM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 186894

Pat - Re: "a guy on the Dell thread claims there is a guy testing one now. I didn't think that was possible. Is it?" Not yet. Merced software can be developed and tested on Merced Simulators running on existing hardware platforms. Re: "He reports it will blow away everything in existence. " It will be quite impressive - 4 FPU execution units, gobs of L1 cache plus the speeds that 0.18 micron processing will allow - not to mention the parallel processing. Of course, the latter depends on careful software development and will undoubtedly progress over time as OS and compiler support for the EPIC capability improve. Paul