5 ms·

Isn't the material a little bit old? I remember reading about all this stuff in the University circa 1996. Edit: originally said "outdated".

artemonster 6y ago
ahem, what HAS changed since then? besides new models & more updated "MHz" values and some tables with performances, nothing that is of interest to a compressed introduction to the topic. So, personally, what would you have added to the article?
- pantulis 6y ago
  Well, I wouldn't know, that's why I clicked on the article :P I said "outdated" in a wrong way, because this means is not valid today, which is obviously not the case.
kens 6y ago
I wouldn't say outdated, but these ideas have a long history. Superscalar processors go back to Cray's CDC 6600 in 1966. Cache memory was used in the IBM System/360 Model 85 in 1969. Pipelining was used in the ILLIAC II (1962) and probably earlier. Branch prediction was used in the IBM Stretch (1961). Out-of-order execution and register renaming was implemented in the IBM System/360 Model 91 (1966). It's interesting to see how many CPU architecture ideas that we consider modern were first developed in the 1960s, and how they took a long time to move into microprocessor.
- FullyFunctional 6y ago
  That's of course true, but it's might be misleading. OoO didn't take off until HPS came up with the reorder buffer (and enabled precise exceptions), with Pentium Pro being the first (and highly successful) implementation. Also, branch prediction has dramatically improved since stretch, McFarly's two-level was a breakthrough and the current state of the art is Seznec's TAGE-SC. My point is that there's still a lot of advancement made.
- pantulis 6y ago
  You are right, outdated would imply not useful which is obviously not true. But all of this stuff was in my copy of Hennessy & Patterson from those days so it is not exactly new (because I am that old!).
keithnz 6y ago
old, but still relevant for what it is discussing. The wiki page on x86 has a pretty good summary of the addition of things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 .

artemonster 6y ago

ahem, what HAS changed since then? besides new models & more updated "MHz" values and some tables with performances, nothing that is of interest to a compressed introduction to the topic. So, personally, what would you have added to the article?

pantulis 6y ago
Well, I wouldn't know, that's why I clicked on the article :P I said "outdated" in a wrong way, because this means is not valid today, which is obviously not the case.

kens 6y ago

I wouldn't say outdated, but these ideas have a long history. Superscalar processors go back to Cray's CDC 6600 in 1966. Cache memory was used in the IBM System/360 Model 85 in 1969. Pipelining was used in the ILLIAC II (1962) and probably earlier. Branch prediction was used in the IBM Stretch (1961). Out-of-order execution and register renaming was implemented in the IBM System/360 Model 91 (1966). It's interesting to see how many CPU architecture ideas that we consider modern were first developed in the 1960s, and how they took a long time to move into microprocessor.

FullyFunctional 6y ago
That's of course true, but it's might be misleading. OoO didn't take off until HPS came up with the reorder buffer (and enabled precise exceptions), with Pentium Pro being the first (and highly successful) implementation. Also, branch prediction has dramatically improved since stretch, McFarly's two-level was a breakthrough and the current state of the art is Seznec's TAGE-SC. My point is that there's still a lot of advancement made.
pantulis 6y ago
You are right, outdated would imply not useful which is obviously not true. But all of this stuff was in my copy of Hennessy & Patterson from those days so it is not exactly new (because I am that old!).

keithnz 6y ago

old, but still relevant for what it is discussing. The wiki page on x86 has a pretty good summary of the addition of things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 .