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Yes, VLIW is great for DSPs but not very much else. When the guide was written in 2001, Transmeta and Itanic were still around. So it made sense to include it b
by solarexplorer 13y ago
Yes, VLIW is great for DSPs but not very much else. When the guide was written in 2001, Transmeta and Itanic were still around. So it made sense to include it back then.
- cma 13y agoGPUs are somewhat VLIW aren't they?
- zhemao 13y agoAs far as I know, they're SIMD, not VLIW. In VLIW, each ALU can be executing a different opcode. In SIMD, each ALU is executing the same opcode, but with a different operand.
- willvarfar 13y agoThe ATI cards were VLIW which gave them advantages in fixed pipeline, but as more and more programmatic shaders turned up ATI moved more towards CISC afaik.
- erichocean 13y agoGPUs are actually "single program, multiple data" (SPMD) machines, as far as programming is concerned. Internally, I believe they're implemented in a SIMD-like fashion, with extra hardware to handle the single program aspect within each lane.
- rodgerd 13y agoItanium has been outselling SPARC and POWER for most of its life. It may have failed at Intel's original job (deprecate the marginally open x86 space in favour of an Itanium closed shop), but it's been a commercial success against its main competitors.
- huxley 13y agoIt's possible that Itanium outsold POWER but only if you ignore PowerPC which was its most successful commercialization. As an architecture it existed not only in servers but in in PowerMacs, Xbox 360, PS3, Gamecube, Wii and in embedded architectures. Itanium was a piker compared to POWER.
- mgraczyk 13y agoDSPs are still a hugely important and evolving part of the computer architecture ecosystem, not to mention an important part of the market. I'd be willing to bet your cellphone has 4-6 DSP cores in it built by 2-3 different companies.