On Thu, Dec 20, 2007 at 01:47:24PM -0800, SJS wrote:
A specialized controller will always outperform a general-purpose
processor, all other things being equal.
When the general-purpose processors get to the point of outperforming
the specialized controllers, the specialized controllers are replaced
with a dedicated general-purpose processors.
I think a lot has to do with economies of scale. I heard a talk by one of
the designers of the Haskell language about how they spent several years
trying to develop a specialized processor for the language. They ended up
concluding that with any kind of resources they could find, they couldn't
even approach how general-purpose processors were advancing. They got to
the point where a niave compiler generated code that ran faster than the
custom hardware they had been developing.
Fortunately, fast general-purpose processors make fairly decent specialized
controllers. It then allows neat things like running Linux on cell phones
and stuff like that.
Dave
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