[comp.arch] Superscalar and dataflow

d65y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (01/19/91)

It seems to me that the advanced superscalar and pipelined architectures,
are beginning to look a lot like dataflow machines internally.  Am I
completely off-base or has this been noted before?  If someone spent
as much effort building a 1 million transister dataflow chip, would
they get as good or better performance?

Sam Paik
d65y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu

"I cannot tell you anything.  I am from the Ministry of Information."
   - response of a journalist's Iraqi escort

prener@arnor.uucp (01/22/91)

In our early thinking about what ultimately turned into the
RISC System/6000, we spent some time discussing the superscalar
approach with dataflow enthusiasts.  We all agreed that superscalar
delivered more performance than dataflow, for a given amount of hardware.

                                      Dan Prener
                                      (prener @ ibm.com)