
More than a decade ago, Intel ran into an issue trying to deliver what was to be the world's top-ranked supercomputer: it looked possible that its new Pentium Pro processors at the heart of the system might not arrive in time. As a result, the chipmaker made an unusual move by paying Hewlett-Packard $100,000 to evaluate
building the system using its PA-RISC processors in the machine, said Paul Prince, now Dell's chief technology officer for enterprise products but then Intel's system architect for the supercomputer. Called ASCI Red and housed at Sandia National Laboratories, it was designed to be the first supercomputer to cross the threshold of a trillion math calculations per second.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I am talking about VLIW in regards to CPU, not GPU or DSP. Intel created the i960, Sun created the Majc processor, I also believe that IBM might have tried it at one stage. VLIW when used for a general purpose CPU is ultimately epic failure - its performance is ultimately set on a perfect stream of data flowing into the processor which of course rarely happens in reality.
Does VLIW design have hope in specialised areas like GPU or encryption acceleration? sure, but I never suggested that it couldn't be used in specialised roles.