[Info-vax] BOINC for VMS

[David Froble]

John Wallace wrote:

> Whether Kumar thinks Intel are stupid or not is largely irrelevant
> anyway. The historical fact is that Intel in recent years is a one-
> technology company, and that technology is x86. More specifically,
> it's implementing ever more complex x86s by enhancing their chip
> fabrication technologies. x86 hasn't got faster for years, you just
> get more of them on one core. Outside the x86 sector, they haven't had
> a significant commercial success for years, and even in the x86 sector
> they have to resort to anti-competitive tactics to "motivate" the
> system builders to stay with Intel rather than the alternatives.

We're all entitled to opinions ....

Your statement about x86 not getting faster needs to be examined.

If you mean that the architecture hasn't been getting fundamental re-design, you may have 
a point.  But "not faster", would not be correct.  Every time they do a process shrink 
there is speed improvements.  Basically what you alluded to in "enhancing their chip 
fabrication technologies".

Since the end of the Alpha, process shrinks have been one of the major reasons for speed 
improvements.  AMD, and then Intel (I believe) moved to on-chip memory controllers, but 
that was first done on Alpha EV7.

The windoz system I use has an Athlon 64 San Deigo core.  I once wrote that it was the 
fastest single core CPU ever mfg, and would remain so.  Got a lot of ridicule for that, 
but, I still think that I'm right.  Why?  Because both AMD and Intel declared that all 
future CPUs would have multiple cores on a chip.  SO it was indeed the last and best of 
the single core CPUs.

You may indeed purchase a "single core" CPU, but that's because additional cores on the 
chip are either defective, or have been disabled.  AMD's Calisto CPU is a good example. 
Basically a Deneb 4 core chip, with only two (2) of the cores active, to fill a marketing 
niche.  Was a great gamble for many people, purchasing a 2-core chip, and unlocking the 
additional cores.  A gamble, because sometimes the additional cores were good, and 
sometimes not.  I got one, could use 3 cores, but the 4th was broken.

At that time the CPUs were hitting a "wall".  There is a finite speed for electricity, and 
without possibly super-conductors, you cannot get any faster.  Process shrinks provided 
for shorter distances, and therefore "faster" CPUs.  What else to do?  More cores on a 
chip, and perhaps methods for better inter-core communications.  That's what you sometimes 
get these days.

Myself, (which probably doesn't mean much), I feel that the OoO concept in Alpha and Power 
provides a method to get faster processing out of a set of instructions, if, IF, you can 
coordinate it well enough.  How to do this?  Simple, one word, "money".  Takes lots of 
smart people trying different ideas, adopting those that work, and setting aside those 
that don't work, "today".  DEC didn't, or couldn't, continue to fund Alpha.  So far I 
haven't heard that IBM has taken that route.

Process shrinks and tons of cache have made the itanic much faster than the Alphas.  That, 
and some small inter-core communication improvements are all Intel has been able to manage.