Is it time to stop research in Computer Architecture ?
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From: Bernd Paysan on 19 Oct 2009 10:12 nmm1(a)cam.ac.uk wrote: >>Printing in China has been used for about a 1000 years when movable types >>where invented there - and that invention didn't catch on. It was easy >>enough to carve the writing into stone or wood and print that way, movable >>types are only cost effective if you print in low volume. > > That's not true. The converse is. Carving a whole block in reverse > and printing from that is only cost-effective if the number of pages > printed is small. You need to get that equation right: The initial setup cost of carving a whole block is high, so it is cost-effective if the number of pages printed with one carved block is also high. You have to print the same page quite often to amortize the carving, but it doesn't matter if you do so with just a few pages, or with many pages - as long as you are able to sell the whole book in 10k units, carving is worth the effort. Movable types don't last as long as carved blocks. Movable types finally were accepted in China and surrounded nations when metallurgy had advanced sufficiently to make the movable types last long enough to print even high-volume books. > You need extremely skilled people to carve them, > in order to keep the error rate down. There are also problems with > movable type and Chinese characters (i.e. the number of them!) This is actually not a big problem, since when you are seriously printing, you need a lot of characters anyways (not just so many different ones), and the statistics of Chinese characters means that you have at least an 80/20 rule (>80% of the text uses less than 20% of the available characters, and there's a significant number of high-runners). And the error rate is not so much a problem: Chinese characters are sufficiently redundant. > Before moveable type, almost all printing was things like pictures, > prayers, fabric patterns and other uses where the number of different > pages is small. You are obviously not aware of what kind of books were printed in classical China. Granted, many books had about half of the space devoted to pictures (it's a "because we can" attitude). But a lot of books had many pages, despite the fact that Chinese texts are much denser than texts in western languages. Having a much larger market to sell the books to (more population, more literacy, same written language everywhere) made it easier to amortize printing with carved blocks. -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
From: Del Cecchi on 19 Oct 2009 10:24 "Piotr Wyderski" <piotr.wyderski(a)mothers.against.spam.gmail.com> wrote in message news:hb90h2$2eg$1(a)node1.news.atman.pl... > ChrisQ wrote: > >> In this respect, there's a basic conflict between the aims >> of science / pursuit of excellence and the aims of business. > > Once upon a time there was an attempt to satisfy "the aims of > science / pursuit of excellence". > It was called Itanium. Turned out to be a multi-billion dollar flop. > No more projects like that please! > > Best regards > Piotr Wyderski > Actually that wasn't the aim of Itanium, at least if you are a cynic like me. Some would say that it was an attempt to create a new proprietary architecture that was outside the web of cross licensing agreements that Intel had. The notion that it would be better merely had to be plausible in order to achieve that goal.
From: ChrisQ on 19 Oct 2009 10:52 Del Cecchi wrote: > > Actually that wasn't the aim of Itanium, at least if you are a cynic > like me. Some would say that it was an attempt to create a new > proprietary architecture that was outside the web of cross licensing > agreements that Intel had. > > The notion that it would be better merely had to be plausible in order > to achieve that goal. > That was my take on it as well. Design an architecture so complex that no one could copy or simulate it's functionality. Intel never could design a simple coherent processor anyway. Even stuff as far back as 8086 was pain in the neck to design hardware for and the architecture was far from orthoganal or compiler friendly. I know, having designed memory boards and drivers for early 8086 machines back in the mid 80's. Even the hardware reference manual appeared to contradict itself from one page to the next. Compare the 8086 with the 68k or any number of other compiler friendly architectures and one wonders how it ever got as far as it did. Now, that's all thst's left in the mainstream and the whole fabric of computing suffers because of it's history and inertia... Regards, Chris
From: Gavin Scott on 19 Oct 2009 13:19 "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <ag-news(a)patten-glew.net> wrote: > Some of us even went and took classes on the topic. Heh, well ok then :) G.
From: Stephen Sprunk on 19 Oct 2009 17:05
nmm1(a)cam.ac.uk wrote: > In article <1947351.S7ZIpNfcyU(a)elfi.zetex.de>, > Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan(a)gmx.de> wrote: >>>> The Disc of Phaistos is typed document, demonstrating both know-how and >>>> technical base, but printing didn't take off until 1500. >>> >>> Er, if you think that being able to hand-stamp a clay tablet with >>> hand-carved seals is a suitable technological base for building a >>> printer, I suggest that you try it. >> >> Printing in China has been used for about a 1000 years when movable types >> where invented there - and that invention didn't catch on. It was easy >> enough to carve the writing into stone or wood and print that way, movable >> types are only cost effective if you print in low volume. > > That's not true. The converse is. Carving a whole block in reverse > and printing from that is only cost-effective if the number of pages > printed is small. I don't see how the number of original pages is relevant. What matters is the number of copies of each page, and the more you print, the more copies you can amortize the typesetting cost across. Extremely long documents would require a lot of type if you laid everything out ahead of time, but presumably you'd lay out as many pages as you have type for, then wait until the first page was copied before laying out the next, etc. Or you could just buy/make more pieces of type. It'd be another situation entirely if you didn't have movable type. > You need extremely skilled people to carve them, in order to keep the > error rate down. You'd need skilled artisans for the original molds, just like with Latin type, but pouring and using each individual piece of type is a relatively mechanical process that doesn't require nearly as much skill. > There are also problems with movable type and Chinese characters (i.e. > the number of them!) You wouldn't need as many different pieces of type as you'd think; most of the more complicated characters are composed of various combinations of simpler sub-characters. > Before moveable type, almost all printing was things like pictures, > prayers, fabric patterns and other uses where the number of different > pages is small. ITYM where the number of original pages was small but the number of copies was huge. >> The invention that made printing feasible was the invention of >> (cheap) paper - both in Europe and in China. > > That's true. .... because the price went down and the volume of copies went way, way up as a result. It's classic economy of scale. S -- Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking |