Re: Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug

Robert Redelmeier wrote:

>In addition to this very valid commercial argument, there is also a
>fundamental difference between this AMD "bug" and the Intel FDIV bug:
>the AMD bug might slow machines a bit under unusual cir***stances.
>The Intel FDIV bug gave erronious results in a few cases.
>People worry _far_ more about data corruption than machine speed.  
>The FDIV bug might well have sunk AMD.  This will not.

Huh?  Were there not work-arounds for the FDIV bug that eliminated the
chance for "data corruption"?  Really, from my understanding, the FDIV
bug affected only a TINY percentage of users.  The AMD's bug affects
EVERYONE.

>Actually, I find the continued harping on the AMD bug interesting
>in and of itself.  No-one complains of things they don't consider
>a threat.  AMD must be considered a serious threat. 

What silly, saccharin cheerleading.  Go AMD!

>(snip)

More of the same.

>I believe actual performance is increasingly hard to measure.

I believe different.  Why would it be "increasing hard" to measure?

>MHz hasn't cut it for a long time.  

Yeah, we know that.

>Intel has focussed on
>bandwidth and cache.  AMD has worked on latency.  As a result,
>each processor excels at some tasks and is only mediocre
>at others.  There is no one "best" CPU.

Sounds like what someone who is getting their ass kicked in the
benchmarks would say.