Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 07:23:02 -0500 From: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu> Cc: Soren Kristensen <soekris@alameda.net>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Original PC and talk Message-ID: <19980521072302.21950@right.PCS> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980520233946.312a-100000@localhost>; from Chuck Robey on May 05, 1998 at 11:47:17PM -0400 References: <3563A210.31CF@alameda.net> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980520233946.312a-100000@localhost>
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On May 05, 1998 at 11:47:17PM -0400, Chuck Robey wrote: > All those tricks (the same ones) are why processors like the DEC Alpha > are so hot. Things like register renaming don't give you much > improvement if you're talking about such a tiny humber of registers to > begin with (referring to the X86 here). Huh? Register renaming (from the architecture's point of view) only refers to the internal on-chip registers (reservation stations), not the externally visible registers (from the compiler's point of view). There can be a lot of internal registers. These are marshalled and committed (or squashed) by the reorder buffer at the end of execution (assuming a relatively modern chip here). This reordering does give a performance boost, even if there are only a few architecturally visible registers, as in the case of x86. -- Jonathan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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