3 ms·

I don't think that's "sweet" I think that's a bad decision. What if I don't need two of those per 10 arm cores? Now I'm just paying for gates I don't need.

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
What if you don't need AES encryption? Now you're just paying for gates you don't need. What if you don't need SIMD instructions? Now you're just paying for gates you don't need. It doesn't matter. Modern processors have the complete opposite problem. It isn't that transistors are expensive, it's that they're so cheap you end up with too many and they generate too much heat. If you can stick a block on there which 60% of your customers can use and the other 40% can shut off to leave more headroom for frequency scaling, it's a win. Also, the number of gates you need for a network controller is small.
wmf 13y ago
You haven't been paying for the silicon for a while; when you buy a chip you're really paying for the design and it's cheaper to design one chip with all the features people might need.
vidarh 13y ago
Then you buy a different chip if they're not cost effective. As an entry into the server market, this sounds awesome; for things like storage aggregation and vm migration, gigabit ethernet is becoming a real bottleneck for many applications as the core counts has gone up.
colanderman 13y ago
In server farms, who cares if the processor costs $400 or $500. Energy usage is the biggest cost over time, and this silicon (presumably) isn't powered if it's not used.
sitkack 13y ago
We have more gates than we know what do with. There is little correlation with die area and end user price.
marcosdumay 13y ago
It's much cheaper to make a chip that both you and the other 99% of the people (that need 2 ethernet ports/CPU) need than making a specific chip for each market.

3 ms·

I don't think that's "sweet" I think that's a bad decision. What if I don't need two of those per 10 arm cores? Now I'm just paying for gates I don't need.

by thrownaway2424 13y ago

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
What if you don't need AES encryption? Now you're just paying for gates you don't need. What if you don't need SIMD instructions? Now you're just paying for gates you don't need. It doesn't matter. Modern processors have the complete opposite problem. It isn't that transistors are expensive, it's that they're so cheap you end up with too many and they generate too much heat. If you can stick a block on there which 60% of your customers can use and the other 40% can shut off to leave more headroom for frequency scaling, it's a win. Also, the number of gates you need for a network controller is small.
wmf 13y ago
You haven't been paying for the silicon for a while; when you buy a chip you're really paying for the design and it's cheaper to design one chip with all the features people might need.
vidarh 13y ago
Then you buy a different chip if they're not cost effective. As an entry into the server market, this sounds awesome; for things like storage aggregation and vm migration, gigabit ethernet is becoming a real bottleneck for many applications as the core counts has gone up.
colanderman 13y ago
In server farms, who cares if the processor costs $400 or $500. Energy usage is the biggest cost over time, and this silicon (presumably) isn't powered if it's not used.
sitkack 13y ago
We have more gates than we know what do with. There is little correlation with die area and end user price.
marcosdumay 13y ago
It's much cheaper to make a chip that both you and the other 99% of the people (that need 2 ethernet ports/CPU) need than making a specific chip for each market.