On Thursday 24 May 2007 10:32 pm, Ralph Johnson wrote:
> The point of the thesis is that a lot of proposed hardware features
> don't help performance very much, and in fact there are software
> solutions that are more effective.  This is a good point.  However, it
> doesn't mean that no hardware features can help.  Moreover, it assumes
> that hardware is expensive and software is cheap, and in fact the
> opposite is true.
Mmm.. Software and hardware represents two end of a continuum, so both 
propositions are over simplifications.

The fixed costs in hardware is so high now that it is economical only if 
manufactured in large numbers. Therefore it is important to get 'it right the 
first time'. This depends on the accuracy and precision of the design and 
testing tools. The dependency trace will lead you back to building software 
that 'works the first time'. Doing that is not cheap. Dijkstra's Turing award 
lecture goes into why producing correct software in the large is so 
difficult. Until we solve these issues and learn to produce 
microcode/nanocode/picocode within acceptable limits of accuracy, the system 
costs will be tough to control.

Regards .. Subbu