HP's Q&A about OpenVMS, x86-64, and Itanium

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

Terry Shannon recently did an interview about the future directions of
OpenVMS. HP strongly denies they will ever port their OpenVMS operating
system over to x86 extensions (AMD64, EM64T) from Itanium. Of course, just a
few months ago, they were strongly denying that they would ever use AMD64
systems at all, just a few weeks before announcing the biggest roll-out of
Opteron servers that AMD has seen so far. Also HP says that it doesn't need
a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts
see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."

http://www.shannonknowshpc.com/stories.php?story=04/06/09/3222020

Yousuf Khan

--
Humans: contact me at ykhan at rogers dot com
Spambots: just reply to this email address ;-)

 

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In article <ip%xc.2461$LOB.872@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>,
"Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> writes:
|> ... Also HP says that it doesn't need
|> a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts
|> see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."

Ah. The doctrine of Historical Inevitability. How nice to see
such, er, interesting philosophies being preserved.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

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On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:48:30 GMT, "Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:

>Terry Shannon recently did an interview about the future directions of
>OpenVMS. HP strongly denies they will ever port their OpenVMS operating
>system over to x86 extensions (AMD64, EM64T) from Itanium. Of course, just a
>few months ago, they were strongly denying that they would ever use AMD64
>systems at all, just a few weeks before announcing the biggest roll-out of
>Opteron servers that AMD has seen so far. Also HP says that it doesn't need
>a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts
>see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."

So HP is basing its projections on the prognostications of "leading
industry analysts" now?? Am I missing something here? I though that it
was.... oh never mind!

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

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"Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:

>Also HP says that it doesn't need
>a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts
>see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."

*scoff*

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

"Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> writes:

>Terry Shannon recently did an interview about the future directions of
>OpenVMS. HP strongly denies they will ever port their OpenVMS operating
>system over to x86 extensions (AMD64, EM64T) from Itanium. Of course, just a
>few months ago, they were strongly denying that they would ever use AMD64
>systems at all, just a few weeks before announcing the biggest roll-out of
>Opteron servers that AMD has seen so far. Also HP says that it doesn't need
>a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts
>see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."

Perhaps they can send some of the leading industry experts to PTC:

http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/itanium_letter.htm

Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.

 

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"Casper H.S. Dik" <Casper.Dik@Sun.COM> wrote in message
news:40c9ae4d$0$37789$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
> "Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> writes:
>
> >Terry Shannon recently did an interview about the future directions of
> >OpenVMS. HP strongly denies they will ever port their OpenVMS operating
> >system over to x86 extensions (AMD64, EM64T) from Itanium. Of course,
just a
> >few months ago, they were strongly denying that they would ever use AMD64
> >systems at all, just a few weeks before announcing the biggest roll-out
of
> >Opteron servers that AMD has seen so far. Also HP says that it doesn't
need
> >a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry
analysts
> >see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."
>
> Perhaps they can send some of the leading industry experts to PTC:
>
> http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/itanium_letter.htm

Oh, dear - how embarrassingly public and direct. One suspects that this
particular departing rat may never have been all that enthused about Itanic
in the first place - or at least became unenthused after acquiring direct
experience with it.

- bill

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

Casper H.S. Dik wrote:
> "Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> writes:
>
>>... Also HP says that it doesn't need
>>a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts
>>see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."
>
>
> Perhaps they can send some of the leading industry experts to PTC:
>
> http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/itanium_letter.htm
>

So when do we expect x86-64 emulation for Itanium?

RM

 

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"Robert Myers" <rmyers1400@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:jgjyc.32265$Sw.29458@attbi_s51...
> Casper H.S. Dik wrote:
> > "Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> writes:
> >
> >>... Also HP says that it doesn't need
> >>a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry
analysts
> >>see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."
> >
> >
> > Perhaps they can send some of the leading industry experts to PTC:
> >
> > http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/itanium_letter.htm
> >
>
> So when do we expect x86-64 emulation for Itanium?

I'd say probably not before they get its vanilla-x86 emulation up to snuff -
i.e., probably never.

- bill

 

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George Macdonald <fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:
> So HP is basing its projections on the prognostications of "leading
> industry analysts" now?? Am I missing something here? I though that
> it was.... oh never mind!

Nah, I think this is HP's way of saying to expect OpenVMS for AMD64 to be
announced soon.

Yousuf Khan

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

In article <m-GdnU9K0dkyU1TdRVn-tw@metrocast.net>,
"Bill Todd" <billtodd@metrocast.net> writes:
|>
|> > So when do we expect x86-64 emulation for Itanium?
|>
|> I'd say probably not before they get its vanilla-x86 emulation up to snuff -
|> i.e., probably never.

I am speculating that the much-replicated Alpha engineers and the
most innovative Intel ones are designing a completely new range
for 2007/8, and that this will be microcoded (like the Banias and
Pentium 4). It will come in Itanium, x86-64 and possibly other
flavours, and possibly be able to switch between them dynamically.
Combine that with multiple cores, and you have an interesting
basis for a self-configuring system


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:48:30 GMT, "Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com>
wrote:
>Terry Shannon recently did an interview about the future directions of
>OpenVMS. HP strongly denies they will ever port their OpenVMS operating
>system over to x86 extensions (AMD64, EM64T) from Itanium. Of course, just a
>few months ago, they were strongly denying that they would ever use AMD64
>systems at all, just a few weeks before announcing the biggest roll-out of
>Opteron servers that AMD has seen so far. Also HP says that it doesn't need
>a contingency plan in case Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts
>see the success of Itanium as being inevitable."

Haha, somehow I'm not at all surprised that HP is placing it's faith
in "industry analysts"! Having recently gained some exposure to the
inner workings of HP, I can say without a doubt that it's one of the
most confused and disorganized companies out there and they've got a
lot of the wrong people making decisions.

I don't know if the old Packard family was right about the merger with
Compaq being a bad idea, or if things were this bad before the merger,
but HP is definitely suffering from schizophrenia at this stage.
Basing your product lines on the whims of some analyst is perhaps the
best proof that no one is home in upper management!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

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nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote in message news:<cacjn4$6v0$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>...
> In article <m-GdnU9K0dkyU1TdRVn-tw@metrocast.net>,
> "Bill Todd" <billtodd@metrocast.net> writes:
> |>
> |> > So when do we expect x86-64 emulation for Itanium?
> |>
> |> I'd say probably not before they get its vanilla-x86 emulation up to snuff -
> |> i.e., probably never.
>
> I am speculating that the much-replicated Alpha engineers and the
> most innovative Intel ones are designing a completely new range
> for 2007/8, and that this will be microcoded (like the Banias and
> Pentium 4). It will come in Itanium, x86-64 and possibly other
> flavours, and possibly be able to switch between them dynamically.
> Combine that with multiple cores, and you have an interesting
> basis for a self-configuring system

There is some speculation, and some facts(?) here.

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2004/0305/kaigai070.htm

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpc.watch.impress.co.jp%2Fdocs%2F2004%2F0305%2Fkaigai070.htm&lp=ja_en

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote in message news:<cacjn4$6v0$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>...
> In article <m-GdnU9K0dkyU1TdRVn-tw@metrocast.net>,
> "Bill Todd" <billtodd@metrocast.net> writes:
> |>
> |> > So when do we expect x86-64 emulation for Itanium?
> |>
> |> I'd say probably not before they get its vanilla-x86 emulation up to snuff -
> |> i.e., probably never.
>
> I am speculating that the much-replicated Alpha engineers and the
> most innovative Intel ones are designing a completely new range
> for 2007/8, and that this will be microcoded (like the Banias and
> Pentium 4). It will come in Itanium, x86-64 and possibly other
> flavours, and possibly be able to switch between them dynamically.
> Combine that with multiple cores, and you have an interesting
> basis for a self-configuring system

I have no idea what this paragraph means.

Also, Why do you consider microcode a step forward?

Brannon
not speaking for Intel

>
>
> Regards,
> Nick Maclaren.

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

In article <734da31c.0406120535.4c38786f@posting.google.com>,
David Svensson <icerq4a@spray.se> wrote:
>>
>> I am speculating that the much-replicated Alpha engineers and the
>> most innovative Intel ones are designing a completely new range
>> for 2007/8, and that this will be microcoded (like the Banias and
>> Pentium 4). It will come in Itanium, x86-64 and possibly other
>> flavours, and possibly be able to switch between them dynamically.
>> Combine that with multiple cores, and you have an interesting
>> basis for a self-configuring system
>
>There is some speculation, and some facts(?) here.
>
>http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2004/0305/kaigai070.htm
>
>http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpc.watch.impress.co.jp%2Fdocs%2F2004%2F0305%2Fkaigai070.htm&lp=ja_en

Thanks very much. Unfortunately, I don't read Japanese, and decoding
the Janglish will take me a little time. But it would not be the
first time that the Japanese put two and two together a long time before
anyone in the West did ....


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

In article <4495ef1f.0406121557.4f28dfd6@posting.google.com>,
Brannon Batson <Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com> wrote:
>nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote in message news:<cacjn4$6v0$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>...
>> In article <m-GdnU9K0dkyU1TdRVn-tw@metrocast.net>,
>> "Bill Todd" <billtodd@metrocast.net> writes:
>> |>
>> |> > So when do we expect x86-64 emulation for Itanium?
>> |>
>> |> I'd say probably not before they get its vanilla-x86 emulation up to snuff -
>> |> i.e., probably never.
>>
>> I am speculating that the much-replicated Alpha engineers and the
>> most innovative Intel ones are designing a completely new range
>> for 2007/8, and that this will be microcoded (like the Banias and
>> Pentium 4). It will come in Itanium, x86-64 and possibly other
>> flavours, and possibly be able to switch between them dynamically.
>> Combine that with multiple cores, and you have an interesting
>> basis for a self-configuring system
>
>I have no idea what this paragraph means.

I have no idea why not

I will try a rephrasing. My guess is that the new design will have
an inner core and infrastructure (memory management, CPU-CPU links
etc.) that is not directly programmable by at least unprivileged
code. There will be another layer that translates the ISAs it
supports into code that executes on the inner core, though I can't
guess which of the many technologies to do that will be used, and
have little idea whether a chip will be fixed in an ISA mode during
manufacture or be changeable later.

All of the definitions of microcode that I have seen that exclude
the Pentium 4 have been revisionist marketing. In the 1960s and
1970s, it would have been classified as an advanced microcoded
design.

But, as I said, there are considerable advantages to NOT fixing it
during manufacture, as it would allow Intel to build boards or even
systems that could be IPLed as IA-64, x86-64 or whatever servers.
Surely I don't have to explain the advantages of that?

>Also, Why do you consider microcode a step forward?

Why do you assume that I regard future developments to be necessarily
a step forward?

But, as I have posted before, microcode (preferably of the advanced
Pentium 4 or Crusoe type) would allow an ISA to be designed with
application/compiler constraints foremost, while still having an
execution engine that was designed with hardware constraints foremost.
This could be used to increase reliability.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

Nick Maclaren wrote:

> I am speculating that the much-replicated Alpha engineers and the
> most innovative Intel ones are designing a completely new range
> for 2007/8, and that this will be microcoded (like the Banias and
> Pentium 4).  It will come in Itanium, x86-64 and possibly other
> flavours, and possibly be able to switch between them dynamically.
> Combine that with multiple cores, and you have an interesting
> basis for a self-configuring system

Cool! Like what PR1ME did. Maybe the new Intel chips will be able to emulate
Honeywells too. Maybe we could reinvent microcode with JIT compiling (where
did I hear that last...)? ;-)

http://www.malch.com/prime/primefaq.htm#L2_18

/Per Schröder

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote in message news:<cah6aq$lmu$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>...
> In article <4495ef1f.0406121557.4f28dfd6@posting.google.com>,
> Brannon Batson <Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote in message news:<cacjn4$6v0$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>...
> >> In article <m-GdnU9K0dkyU1TdRVn-tw@metrocast.net>,
> >> "Bill Todd" <billtodd@metrocast.net> writes:
> >> |>
> >> |> > So when do we expect x86-64 emulation for Itanium?
> >> |>
> >> |> I'd say probably not before they get its vanilla-x86 emulation up to snuff -
> >> |> i.e., probably never.
> >>
> >> [snip]
> >
> >I have no idea what this paragraph means.
>
> I have no idea why not
>
> I will try a rephrasing. My guess is that the new design will have
> an inner core and infrastructure (memory management, CPU-CPU links
> etc.) that is not directly programmable by at least unprivileged
> code. There will be another layer that translates the ISAs it
> supports into code that executes on the inner core, though I can't
> guess which of the many technologies to do that will be used, and
> have little idea whether a chip will be fixed in an ISA mode during
> manufacture or be changeable later.

BB> Hardware hasn't done a great job of just in time compiling one ISA
into another in the past--are you expecting a breakthrough?

> All of the definitions of microcode that I have seen that exclude
> the Pentium 4 have been revisionist marketing. In the 1960s and
> 1970s, it would have been classified as an advanced microcoded
> design.

BB> Microcode is used to emulate slow legacy things, more or less.
Anything that wants to be fast or power-efficient needs to run on
dedicated hardware.

> But, as I said, there are considerable advantages to NOT fixing it
> during manufacture, as it would allow Intel to build boards or even
> systems that could be IPLed as IA-64, x86-64 or whatever servers.
> Surely I don't have to explain the advantages of that?

BB> No, just let me know how to do it.

> >Also, Why do you consider microcode a step forward?
>
> Why do you assume that I regard future developments to be necessarily
> a step forward?
>
> But, as I have posted before, microcode (preferably of the advanced
> Pentium 4 or Crusoe type) would allow an ISA to be designed with
> application/compiler constraints foremost, while still having an
> execution engine that was designed with hardware constraints foremost.
> This could be used to increase reliability.

BB> Programming languages are designed with application/compiler
constraints foremost, while still allowing code to be generated for an
efficient execution engine. That's the way it works now--and stuff
that isn't performance critical is slowly transitioning over to
portable, ISA-agnostic formats. What you are saying is that we put
the JIT in hardware--and then everybody can build into the same ISA.
The problem is that JIT's don't work as well as full compilers, JIT's
in hardware don't work as well as JIT's in software, and the
intermediate format causes important optimization information to be
lost. Come up with a solution to these problems and I'm on board.

Now if what you are advocating is a development framework which
further abstracts hardware from the people writing the software while
trying to recover as much performance as possible--that's hardly a
novel goal, but it's certainly noble.

As an aside--microcode on x86 and PAL code on IPF are used to add
features (reliability, security, and otherwise) and simplify the
implementation for things that can be slow.

Brannon
not speaking for Intel


>
>
> Regards,
> Nick Maclaren.

 

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"Brannon Batson" <Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4495ef1f.0406141426.4d6155ce@posting.google.com...
> nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote in message
news:<cah6aq$lmu$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>...
> > I will try a rephrasing. My guess is that the new design will have
> > an inner core and infrastructure (memory management, CPU-CPU links
> > etc.) that is not directly programmable by at least unprivileged
> > code. There will be another layer that translates the ISAs it
> > supports into code that executes on the inner core, though I can't
> > guess which of the many technologies to do that will be used, and
> > have little idea whether a chip will be fixed in an ISA mode during
> > manufacture or be changeable later.
>
> BB> Hardware hasn't done a great job of just in time compiling one ISA
> into another in the past--are you expecting a breakthrough?

Well, Transmeta's doing a credible job of JITing x86 into VLIW, so
presumably they could have JITs for IA64 and AMD64 as well. That's also
rumored to be how future Itanics are going to handle x86 emulation (i.e.
FX!32); hopefully it'll be better than the direct hardware support of
earlier models...

Or perhaps all of the external ISAs could decode to a common set of uops?

> BB> Programming languages are designed with application/compiler
> constraints foremost, while still allowing code to be generated for an
> efficient execution engine. That's the way it works now--and stuff
> that isn't performance critical is slowly transitioning over to
> portable, ISA-agnostic formats. What you are saying is that we put
> the JIT in hardware--and then everybody can build into the same ISA.
> The problem is that JIT's don't work as well as full compilers, JIT's
> in hardware don't work as well as JIT's in software, and the
> intermediate format causes important optimization information to be
> lost. Come up with a solution to these problems and I'm on board.

HP's Dynamo supposedly got a 10% performance gain JITing PA-RISC binaries on
a PA-RISC processor, including overhead. While not proof of anything, even
maintaining native performance while under a JIT is damn impressive, and
that opens a lot of doors to runtime optimizations not possible in either
compilers or processors.

> Now if what you are advocating is a development framework which
> further abstracts hardware from the people writing the software while
> trying to recover as much performance as possible--that's hardly a
> novel goal, but it's certainly noble.

C simply exposes too much of the hardware; you may alter what's exposed to
the compiler and thus the programmer, but you have to expose something.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS --Isaac Asimov

 

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Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote:
> Well, Transmeta's doing a credible job of JITing x86 into VLIW, so
> presumably they could have JITs for IA64 and AMD64 as well. That's
> also rumored to be how future Itanics are going to handle x86
> emulation (i.e. FX!32); hopefully it'll be better than the direct
> hardware support of earlier models...

From what I hear, Transmeta's VLIW is nothing like Itanium's VLIW.
Transmeta's VLIW is geared towards the emulation of x86 opcodes specifically
and nothing else.

Yousuf Khan

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

In article <4495ef1f.0406141426.4d6155ce@posting.google.com>,
Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com (Brannon Batson) writes:
|>
|> BB> Hardware hasn't done a great job of just in time compiling one ISA
|> into another in the past--are you expecting a breakthrough?

No. The Crusoe, Pentium 4 and Banias don't do badly, which is what
I am referring to. DEC got good results compiling one ISA to
another, but the momentum seems to have been lost.

|> > All of the definitions of microcode that I have seen that exclude
|> > the Pentium 4 have been revisionist marketing. In the 1960s and
|> > 1970s, it would have been classified as an advanced microcoded
|> > design.
|>
|> BB> Microcode is used to emulate slow legacy things, more or less.
|> Anything that wants to be fast or power-efficient needs to run on
|> dedicated hardware.

So the Pentium 4 wasn't intended to be either?

|> Now if what you are advocating is a development framework which
|> further abstracts hardware from the people writing the software while
|> trying to recover as much performance as possible--that's hardly a
|> novel goal, but it's certainly noble.

That is what I am advocating, but I don't think that it's what Intel
is going to do.

|> As an aside--microcode on x86 and PAL code on IPF are used to add
|> features (reliability, security, and otherwise) and simplify the
|> implementation for things that can be slow.

Yes and no. The way that the trace cache is used on a Pentium 4
is conceptually just a variant of microcode.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

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Stephen Sprunk wrote:

> "Brannon Batson" <Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>BB> Hardware hasn't done a great job of just in time compiling one ISA
>>into another in the past--are you expecting a breakthrough?
>
> Well, Transmeta's doing a credible job of JITing x86 into VLIW, so
> presumably they could have JITs for IA64 and AMD64 as well. That's also

The relatively fast x86 emulation in Transmeta chips owe quite a lot to
the fact that the hw was intentionally designed to be superset of all
important x86 features, plus extra hw to handle/detect memory aliasing
problems, thereby allowing them to enregister memory variables.

Extending it to AMD64 would mostly be a matter of extending the
registers to 64 bit, and possibly increasing the number a bit, to more
easily handle 16 instead of 8 architected regs.

Doing IA64 the same way, with good performance, would be _hard_.

Terje

--
- <Terje.Mathisen@hda.hydro.com>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

In article <cam35s$od9$1@osl016lin.hda.hydro.com>,
Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@hda.hydro.com> writes:
|> Stephen Sprunk wrote:
|> > "Brannon Batson" <Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com> wrote in message
|> >>BB> Hardware hasn't done a great job of just in time compiling one ISA
|> >>into another in the past--are you expecting a breakthrough?
|> >
|> > Well, Transmeta's doing a credible job of JITing x86 into VLIW, so
|> > presumably they could have JITs for IA64 and AMD64 as well. ...
|>
|> The relatively fast x86 emulation in Transmeta chips owe quite a lot to
|> the fact that the hw was intentionally designed to be superset of all
|> important x86 features, plus extra hw to handle/detect memory aliasing
|> problems, thereby allowing them to enregister memory variables.
|>
|> Extending it to AMD64 would mostly be a matter of extending the
|> registers to 64 bit, and possibly increasing the number a bit, to more
|> easily handle 16 instead of 8 architected regs.

Yes, indeed.

|> Doing IA64 the same way, with good performance, would be _hard_.

Yes. My speculation is that Intel management have not learnt the
lessons from the IA-64, and will not be put off by the complexity
of that task.

The underlying engine would clearly owe a lot to the Alpha, and
be particularly similar in its VAX-emulation features. But, of
course, it would have to have TWO legacy architectures to support.
Not an easy task.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes:

> In article <ip%xc.2461$LOB.872@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>,
> "Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@ezrs.com> writes:

>> ... Also HP says that it doesn't need a contingency plan in case
>> Itanium fails, because "leading industry analysts see the success
>> of Itanium as being inevitable."

> Ah. The doctrine of Historical Inevitability. How nice to see
> such, er, interesting philosophies being preserved.

Yep. It doesn't take a card-carrying analyst to see that its success
has been inevitable for a long time now, and it's probably going to
stay inevitable for the foreseeable future.



-kzm
--
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 00:28:44 GMT, "Stephen Sprunk"
<stephen@sprunk.org> wrote:
>"Brannon Batson" <Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:4495ef1f.0406141426.4d6155ce@posting.google.com...
>> BB> Hardware hasn't done a great job of just in time compiling one ISA
>> into another in the past--are you expecting a breakthrough?
>
>Well, Transmeta's doing a credible job of JITing x86 into VLIW, so
>presumably they could have JITs for IA64 and AMD64 as well. That's also
>rumored to be how future Itanics are going to handle x86 emulation (i.e.
>FX!32); hopefully it'll be better than the direct hardware support of
>earlier models...

Transmeta's "credible" job of JITing x86 isn't all that credible.
They haven't managed to match the performance of VIA's C3 chips yet
they are using a die that is more than twice as large and a
SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive design, the core of their "Efficeon" chip
is more complicated and more expensive than the AthlonXP core and
about on-par with Intel's "Northwood" core.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)

In comp.arch Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@hda.hydro.com> wrote:
> Stephen Sprunk wrote:
>
> > "Brannon Batson" <Brannon_Batson@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >>BB> Hardware hasn't done a great job of just in time compiling one ISA
> >>into another in the past--are you expecting a breakthrough?
> >
> > Well, Transmeta's doing a credible job of JITing x86 into VLIW, so
> > presumably they could have JITs for IA64 and AMD64 as well. That's also
>
> The relatively fast x86 emulation in Transmeta chips owe quite a lot to
> the fact that the hw was intentionally designed to be superset of all
> important x86 features, plus extra hw to handle/detect memory aliasing
> problems, thereby allowing them to enregister memory variables.
>
> Extending it to AMD64 would mostly be a matter of extending the
> registers to 64 bit, and possibly increasing the number a bit, to more
> easily handle 16 instead of 8 architected regs.
>
> Doing IA64 the same way, with good performance, would be _hard_.

Couldn't you make teh IA64 set reside in scratchpad ram, and JIT towards
a 32 reg arch that only kept the most often / lately used regs in
actual registers and the rest in scratch? it would then be a pretty ordinary
target with more or less a couple of extra quirks...

>
> Terje
>

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++