[TUHS] PDP-11 legacy, C, and modern architectures

Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com
Fri Jun 29 00:56:09 AEST 2018


On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 10:43:29AM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jun 2018 10:15:38 -0400 "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso at mit.edu>
> wrote:
> > I'll note that Sun made a big bet (one of its last failed bets) on
> > this architecture in the form of the Niagra architecture, with a
> > large number of super "wimpy" cores.  It was the same basic idea
> > --- we can't make big fast cores (since that would lead to high
> > ILP's, complex register rewriting, and lead to cache-oriented
> > security vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown) --- so instead,
> > let's make lots of tiny wimpy cores, and let programmers write
> > highly threaded programs!  They essentially made a bet on the
> > web-based microservice model which you are promoting.
> >
> > And the Market spoke.  And shortly thereafter, Java fell under the
> > control of Oracle....  And Intel would proceed to further dominate
> > the landscape.
> 
> I'll be contrary for a moment.
> 
> Huge numbers of wimpy cores is the model already dominating the
> world. 

Got a source that backs up that claim?  I was recently dancing with
Netflix and they don't match your claim, nor do the other content
delivery networks, they want every cycle they can get.



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