[Pc_Support] Re: ViA C3 for IPCop? Yes/no? -- this still doens't make sense to me ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sat, 2006-10-07 at 15:56 -0400, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Hmmm, why are they using the FPU?  That just doesn't make sense to me.
> The only reason to use the FPU would be on the original Pentium (not Pro
> or later) because of its buggy ALU.  I just have no idea where the FPU
> would be useful for what type of analysis.

I guess the only time you'd use the FPU is if you were leveraging some
SSE instructions on the Athlon/XP/64.  They aren't floating-point
operations, but actually 128-bit (4 x 32-bit) data integer matrix
operations.  In a Pentium III/4/Core, they will use dedicated SSE pipes
(although Core might use its FPU too?), and only the Athlon uses its
FPU.

But that doesn't mean anything for Pentium II, Pro, Pentium, K6, pre-SSE
microcoded Athlons -- let alone microcontrollers that _lack_ a FPU like
Intel XScale, ARM, select MIPS, SH4, etc...  I know Snort runs on them
too.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith          Professional, technical annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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