[Info-vax] Dvorak on Itanic

[Michael Kraemer]

In article <45e94bef-f7bf-4b6b-88e6-a5d48a6244bf at x14g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
Christopher <nadiasvertex at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> 
> IA-64 processors are completely capable of explicit multi-threading.
> In addition, "automatic" threading is extremely hit and miss.  The
> processor should not be involved in decisions about what to
> multithread because it HAS NO CONTEXT.
> 

It is my understanding that the Itanic concept of VLIW
assumes that a lot of instructions could be run in parallel
if only compilers would be smart enough to detect the inherent
parallelism in the source code. 
However, most programs, especially interpreted stuff,
do not have this high degree of parallelism, so the CPU
will starve. 
About the only class of programs which would benefit are 
Linpack type codes (vectors, matrices) with a high degree
of predictable parallelism. And this area is about the only
one where Itanics can hope to compete with RISC and x86.
But still the Top500 is dominated by x86 and Power and its
siblings.