[mythtv-users] How MANY backend threads!?!?!? ***** AUTO-REPLY *****

Greg Oliver oliver.greg at gmail.com
Thu Oct 14 01:22:46 UTC 2010


On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 13, 2010 06:53:30 pm Greg Oliver wrote:
>
>> >
>> > The advances of the ARM-based "Plug" machines will continue I'm sure,
>> > look what we did with the venerable old NSLU2, lots of very capable PBXs
>> > run on them, as well as video capture machines, and today's Plugs very
>> > much outperform the 266Mhz. (or even 133) ARM in the slug.
>>
>> Yes, and MHz for MHz, it is not fair to even put the same equipment
>> side by side (today and 10 years ago)..  There are so many more
>> integrated instruction sets on today's stuff, it would be unfair to
>> compare them..  Not to even mention power draw  :)
>
> True.
>
> But it's surprising how much software today (not talking about Myth specifically) does not use anything beyond decades-old
> instructions, mostly for compatibility reasons. That's one reason I like Gentoo, you can be sure your system is compiled
> to take best advantage of your hardware.
>
> That is starting to change, especially with the multi-core CPUs becoming more common, the later instructions are being
> used more (not that they depend on multi-core, but since a lot of stuff is being re-written to take advantage of multiple
> threads more, some other updates are happening as well). I'm starting to see more stuff come in both i386 and i686
> versions.
>
> You can't even make a comparison between Intel and AMD CPUs on a Mhz. for Mhz. basis, at last the "clock speed wars" seem
> to be over, but comparing an ARM and an Intel or AMD core is almost meaningless, especially with things like the NSLU2
> which doesn't even have a floating point unit.
>
> I recall paying over $100  for an 8087 chip back in the mid-80s. Then there were the "SX" lines of 486 chips which were
> w/o FP co-processors. Just a way for Intel to sell 486s with bad silicon.

I used to sell computers back then - man what an ass kick when a
random potential customer calls you from the computer shopper ad and
all of the questions started - 386/486sx/dx - does the mobo have
math-co socket....  Man, that is one thing I could never do again..
The beginning of the million options computer days  :)  Hell compared
to today that was nothing, but I have a very low explaining treshold,
so not so much a good idea today  :)

> I still have an original Pentium with the fdiv bug, anyone want it? I see even modern kernels still check for that bug.

Our office was right behind Ti in Dallas.  For the longest they tried
to crank out compatible x86 CPUs (long before AMD)..  I probably still
have a few egg trays of those somewhere..  Wish they would have taken
off..  3 competitors always better than 2..


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