[Info-vax] BOINC for VMS

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Johnny Billquist wrote 2012-04-04 15:50:
> On 2012-04-03 19.10, David Froble wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> 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.
>
> I basically agree with all you write. Signals speeds and distances are the
> limiting factors today, and signal speed is not going to change much. Size
> are also getting close to their lower limits, which leaves more clever
> execution.
>
> I'm curious though, is really the Itanium that much faster than the Alpha?
>
> Johnny

Fastest released Alpha was EV7z, 1.3 GHz on a 180 nm process in 2004.
Current IA64 is Tukwila, 1.33-1.73 GHz on a 65 nm process in 2009.

Now, that is only one way to measure "fast", of course... :-)

IMHO, Alpha whould have been faster then Tukwila today if Alpha
would have been on the same 65 nm process as Tukwila is.

EV8 was planned for 2003/4 at 1.2 - 2.0 GHz on a *125* nm process.

I've got the impression that, using comparable process geometries,
Alpha would be faster (then IA64) due to it's "cleaner" arhitecture.