Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 10:39:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Stefan Molnar <stefan@csudsu.com> To: Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> Cc: Linh Pham <lplist@closedsrc.org>, Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com>, Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com>, <kris@obsecurity.org>, <mwlist@lanfear.com>, <freebsd@sysmach.com>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: the AMD factor in FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104201033010.592-100000@digital.csudsu.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104191943460.2730-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET>
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What AMD did to get RISC86 was to buy NextGen. NextGen was a company in the mid/early 90s that devloped a new cpu that openly stated they converted "icky" CISC to "ohhh yeah" RISC. It had a few design issues. - Needed it's own Motherboard (very very odd layout) - Needed it's own Northbridge - You could buy it with and without a FPU AMD bought NextGen, and used their knowlage of the x86, intel chipsets, and Socket 7 layout and design and shoved the NextGen core and bits into a Socket 7 Package. Thus the K6 was born On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Vincent Poy wrote: > On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Linh Pham wrote: > > > On 2001-04-19, Vincent Poy scribbled: > > > > # Somehow I thought the Intel and AMD x86 CPUs were CISC and had a > > # portion that was RISC. > > > > AMD uses their RISC86 engine to turn crummy x86 instructions into > > RISC-like instructions to crunch them more efficiently as it can. The > > Pentium III processors do something like that since the P6 core, but the > > original P6 core sucked at 16-bit code... so Intel had to reduce the > > optimizations in the Out-of-Order engine to increase 16-bit performance > > in the Pentium II. > > Interesting. I guess I never read about how AMD did it... I just > remember reading a comparison of the Pentium versus the PowerPC 603 I > think and it somehow gave the indication that Intel CPU's were CISC > with RISC and the PowerPC was 100% RISC. > > > In reality... the x86 processors and, what people tend to call, RISC > > processors now are really post-RISC. Trying to expand IPC and increase > > Mhz :) Intel went the opposite with the P4. > > True but speaking about AMD, PIII and the likes, where does the > Xeon fit in? > > > Cheers, > Vince - vince@WURLDLINK.NET - Vice President ________ __ ____ > Unix Networking Operations - FreeBSD-Real Unix for Free / / / / | / |[__ ] > WurldLink Corporation / / / / | / | __] ] > San Francisco - Honolulu - Hong Kong / / / / / |/ / | __] ] > HongKong Stars/Gravis UltraSound Mailing Lists Admin /_/_/_/_/|___/|_|[____] > Almighty1@IRC - oahu.DAL.NET Hawaii's DALnet IRC Network Server Admin > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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