Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 19:10:06 03/09/03
Go up one level in this thread
On March 09, 2003 at 01:26:33, Jeremiah Penery wrote: >On March 08, 2003 at 23:58:37, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On March 08, 2003 at 14:52:02, Jeremiah Penery wrote: >> >>>On March 08, 2003 at 01:37:18, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>>Notice anything different? Pentium 3. Pentium 4. They _clearly_ identify >>>>what is "inside" is a pentium-X. That's a bit different than just selling >>> >>>The AMD machines _clearly_ identified that they were, in fact, AMD machines too, >>>so I'm not sure what you're getting at. >> >>And if you go back to that point in time and look at various computing >>journals, magazines and so forth, you will clearly find ads that said >>"Buy AMD. Its faster than a PII, and cheaper. Here are the benchmark >>results that show this..." >> >>What should I (as a naive user) conclude from that? That it is faster >>and cheaper _and_ incompatible? Then why didn't they say "it is faster >>than a pentium II, faster than a hairdryer, and faster than a Nintendo >>N64"??? The conclusion about "faster than a PII" certainly implies that >>it is also _compatible_. > >Alpha is faster than Sparc. Did I just imply they were compatible too? Depends. Did you just tell me to buy an alpha instead of a sparc, saying it would run my sparc executables faster? If so, then your statement was false, yes. > >>>>something that is compared to the pentium II in your own ads, but which is >>>>not quite a pentium-II in fact... >>> >>>By selling them side-by-side, Dell is comparing them. But Pentium3 is not quite >>>a Pentium4 in fact... >> >>And nobody assumes that. > >People assume P3=P4 (in terms of compatibility) just as much as they assume >K6=P2. Maybe some do. But I'd suspect most don't although the assumption that executables compiled and running on a PIII will also run on a PIV is a good assumption. > >>But clearly if someone compares a chip to a PII, >>the implication is that they are equivalent. Otherwise the comparison is >>not very informative. > >I've seen P4 compared to 486, but that doesn't mean anyone should assume they're >totally compatible. Just like you can compare an Alpha to a SPARC. > >But the P3-P4 comparison is much more relevant. They're placed side-by-side >_all the time_, and very clearly is it implied that they're equal except that >the P4 is clocked much higher. The average buyer is NOT going to know the >difference, any more than they knew the difference between a P2 and a K6. Did you see an advertisement where someone was trying to convince you to buy over the other? I doubt it. But with the AMD vs PII, that was the case. > >>>>99% of crafty users don't have any idea how to compile the thing... >>> >>>And probably 99% of that group of people is using Windows, so they use the >>>executable that runs on all processors. It's a non-issue for them. >>> >> >>Not when we were supplying "plain executables" and executables compiled >>specifically for the PII. That was my point. The release notes used to >>explain the different versions (SMP, non-SMP, and specific architecture >>assumptions.) IE Dann has executables optimized for all sorts of platforms. > >"Optimized for X" doesn't necessarily mean "won't run on Y or Z". SMP release >runs fine on uniprocessor machines. But the P4 executable may well not work on >a P2 OR a K6. I don't know, because I don't know whether it uses stuff like SSE >or not. > >>It was the _users_ that assumed that PII = K6 since AMD magazine publicity >>certainly implied it if not outright claimed it. > >They imply that P3=P4 too, in terms of compatibility, but they're not completely >so. Again, it depends. If I do a target=P3, I would expect that to run on a PIV. And most likely if I do a target=p4 it would run on a P3 although I can certainly think of reasons why it wouldn't. But Intel doesn't market the P3 to be compatible with the P4. > >>>BTW, I'm still waiting for those SPARC/MIPS benchmark numbers, as well as the >>>SPARC sales numbers. >> >>SPARC is a problem. I have tried 3 gcc versions and all produce bad code for >>recent versions of Crafty, reasons = unknown. I have some very old SPARC >>numbers but they are useless. I have tried installing the latest 3.2 gcc >>version, and my reliable (for Intel) 2.95.2, and 2.95.5. If I can't get >>good executables then I can't compare 'em. Didn't even try the SGI (I think >>we have two 600mhz machines here, not sure if we have anything faster as I > >I think 600MHz is the fastest they come. At least that's as fast as I've been >able to find any benchmarks for anywhere. > >>am not an SGI/MIPS "person". But something is bad on the sparc. It runs with >>no optimization, but that's a useless comparison. It crashes with -O or >>anything beyond (O3, etc.) > >Why don't you use Sun's compiler, which is really fast for SPARC anyway? Because we don't buy it. It's not cheap and we have so many gcc-based machines we felt the compatibility between compilers was better than the cost of buying Sun's compiler. We used to have it years ago, and yes, I found it to be a bit better than GCC. But eventually GCC started producing code that was as fast as Sun's so we dropped sun's compiler.
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