4 ms·
Out-of-order execution and pipelining date back to the 1960s. The paper calls out the similarity: "If one views the blocks of this scheme as very complex instru
by pdw 4y ago
Out-of-order execution and pipelining date back to the 1960s. The paper calls out the similarity: "If one views the blocks of this scheme as very complex
instructions, then this architecture devolves to a pipelined architecture for executing those instruction, and the interlocks to prevent inter-instruction dependency violations."
In the late 1980s it was a common belief that the limit of single-core CPU performance was very near. So there was intense research into multi-core systems, the holy grail was to find a way to efficiently execute ordinary sequential programs. That was what this paper was trying to achieve: "While we currently believe that this work will lead to
an architecture which can achieve factors of 10-100 times the performance of uniprocessors on unmodified Lisp programs, we have no proof, even in simulation".
- steinuil 4y ago> Out-of-order execution and pipelining date back to the 1960s. On that note: I read The Soul of a New Machine a while ago, which is about a team of engineers designing a computer with a new architecture at the end of the 70s, and while it didn't go into the specifics of how the CPU was implemented it mentioned features such as different layers of cache between the CPU and the RAM, out-of-order execution, instruction prefetching and branch prediction. You'd be surprised at how many things in computers have already been around since the 60s.
- kjs3 4y agoIt was the DG Eclipse MV/8000. There's a pretty good overview/references at https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/330/eagle.html https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/330/eagle.html. There is little new under the sun, and I get a migraine from the reflexive eye-roll when I read about some 'totally new and original innovation' in computers that's actually been around for decades, usually touted by people who weren't even alive when it was first created.
- cafard 4y agoMany thanks for the links!