[Info-vax] Intel previews new Itanium "Poulson" processor

[JF Mezei]

John Reagan wrote:

> Poulson, it will now grab 12 slots (4 bundles) every cycle.  And of course, 
> branches,
> calls, returns, etc. make the chip slow down and even spit out a few things.


OK, So this is a case of a seqential stream of binary instructions of
ANY number of instructions between each "stop bit" ?

So I could have a theoretical stream of 25 instructions before a stop
bit which could be executed in any order.

When running on Tukwilla, it will take the first 6 and execute them, and
as each "slot" is done, it takes the next instruction available in that
stream ?

On Poulson, it woudl take the first 12 instructions and proceed to
process the remaining 13 whenever a slot is freed ?

Is that a correct understanding ?


(do IA64 instructions vary in length of execution or do they all execute
in the same number of cycles ?)