In message <449ADFA1.3020303@acm.org>, James Richard Tyrer writes:

quoted text
> So, as I said, you don't need a powerful processor just to run the X server.

Some early X terminals used a 68k and were fast enough.

quoted text
> Is
> someone credited with the law that states that 4 500 MHz CPUs cost less
> than 1 2 GHz CPU (I first saw it with much lower speeds :-))?

The usual reason is that you can't *get* a 4x faster CPU.

There is more than the cost of the CPUs themselves to consider.
Building a SMP machine and getting it right is non-trivial.

Also, there is overhead.  4 CPUs don't give you 4x the performance.
The more CPUs you add the worse it gets.  If you have a single-threaded
app the extra CPUs might not help much at all.  There is another quote
about crossing the prairie with four strong oxen pulling your covered wagon
rather than 1000 chickens.

But get it right, and doing something that parallelizes well like
a large compile on a machine with 20-30 CPUs absolutely FLYS.

quoted text
> I also
> notice that this law is also breaking down and doesn't seem to always be
> true except that the idea of multiple core processors appears to be 
> based on it.

My understanding is that they have hit a major speed bump, so making
CPUs faster is very difficult right now.
_______________________________________________
Open-graphics mailing list
Open-graphics@duskglow.com
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics
List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)