Re: AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in part:
> On May 21, 11:01 am, Robert Redelmeier <red...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> A recent poster to comp.arch referred to the "cubic dollars"
> that AMD and Intel had spent to make the instruction decoding
> problem go away, so I assume that the investment was large.
> The software quality problem is huge and a huge investment to
> solve it is more than justified.

Uhm ... err ... when did you start believing USENET uncritically?
"cubic dollars" I take as BILLIONS, and AMD has never had this to
spend on development.  Intel might over a number of years.  But hasn't.
x86 CISC decode into RISC was "solved" over ten years ago with iP6 and
aK6 and basically only tweaked since then.  Probably at a development
cost of less than 1 M$.  That wouldn't even begin to address a total
re-write or even audit of the commercial codebase.  For an Idea of
what is involved, look into the OpenBSD review process.

> Market mechanisms were adequate to drive a solution to
> the RISC vs.  CISC problem, but market mechanisms do not
> always work.  

This depends entirely on your definition of "work", and you
must expect different people to have different values.

> You have only to look at the pharmaceutical industry.
> I urge you not to take me on about this one.  I lost a good
> friend three summers ago because of the long term effects
> of a miracle drug that was introduced before we had our
> current system of regulation.

Uhm ... err ... the US FDA has been around since the 1930s.
They were somewhat lax until the Thalidomide debacle in the
late 1950s, clamped down and predictably have been relaxing
ever since, especially in the past 15 years.

> The system of drug regulation we have now is far from perfect,
> but a stroll around Cambidge****t on the edge of the MIT campus
> will clue you in that lots of money is being made, in spite of
> hugely burdensome regulatory requirements like drug trials.

Why do you think spending and flash cash equates to 
money being made?  Real money is invisible -- Omaha NE.


>> Quality is a variable to be optimized, not some
>> deity to be wor****pped.  "Beware false gods".
>>
> I can just imagine hanging that as a motto in someone's office.
> You're kidding, right?  Heard of ISO 9000?  Prepare to wor****p a
> false god.  From what I've seen of it, I'm not keen on ISO 9000,
> but the success of something so clunky should be a clue.

Interesting you should bring that up.  I have much more than a clue.
At work, I've been an ISO-certified internal auditor for 5 years.
The ISO 9000 series really isn't onerous at all: "say what you do,
and do what you say".  It is mostly just good management and some
do***entation that you really should have been keeping all along.

> It doesn't matter what it proves.  No one will be asking
> George Bush's advice about war making except as a learning
> from mistakes exercise.

Maybe so, but it is far from proven that Hil Obamacaine
would have done any better.

> Similarly, citing financial institutions as expert in risk
> management would have worked before Long Term Capital Management.
> As it is, the financial industry, like George Bush, is a study
> in the catastrophic consequences of being overconfident.

You should study Taleb's book "Black Swans"

> The funny thing about risk, like NASA's estimates of risks
> to the shuttles, is that you learn that the methodology is
> faulty only after a catastrophic failure.  A statement of
> confidence about handicapping of risk should tell you to
> find another handicapper.

No, you just need to realize that failure of imagination
can have serious conequences.  "unknown unknowns"

> Big changes are on the way.  Maybe later rather than sooner,
> but they will come.  If you're going to plug into the internet,
> you will be regulated.  I'm not happy about that, but I see no
> way around it.


Please rail away.  I don't mind.  IPv6 has some threats built-in.
But short of technically, managerially and socially infeasible total
packet capture there really is no way to regulate the internet.
Smart people have tried with at best partial success.

>> > We get it, all right.  People's identities and medical
>> > records are stolen en masse, bank accounts are pilfered,
>> > and the Internet is home to powerful botnets with unknowable
>> > levels of capability or maliciousness of intent.
>>
>> Oh dear, you really _do_ live in fear.  NYC? My sympathies.
>>
>> Most of the listed items are _potentials_ whose probability
>> and consequences need to be weighed against other threats.
>>
> There's nothing hypothetical about what I presented.
> All the incidents I've described have already occurred.

So?  Occurence just means you can be more precise about threat
probabilities and consequences.  Yes, a few people have suffered
horrendous in-depth identity theft.  Many more people die on
the roads.  Most cases of ID theft are nothing more than CC fraud
which I've suffered and found fairly easy to correct.


-- Robert