aglew@dwarfs.crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) (07/14/90)
Or how about that other fallacy related to the hot-spot principle? "It isn't worth making any performance change, unless that single change, by itself, will improve the performance of the system by (you choose your value) 10%, 30%, 50%, 100%..." A large number of small, easy to make, performance improvements can easily add up to a large performance improvement. -- Andy Glew, aglew@uiuc.edu
aglew@oberon.crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) (07/16/90)
Just it case it isn't obvious, I don't object to thresholding, only to
thresholding too early.
A correspondent mentioned using thresholding as a criterion for
inclusion of features in an instruction set architecture. No problem.
My problem is, if two features F1 and F2 must work together, and if
when implemented together you get performance improvement P(F1,F2),
but if implemented separately you get only performance improvements
P(F1) and P(F2), such that P(F1)+P(F2)<<P(F1,F2), is with applying the
threshold rule to reject both F1 and F2, because P(F1)<T and P(F2)<T,
even though P(F1,F2)>2*T.
Ie. my problem is with applying the threshold criterion such that
you burn down the trees because no single tree will provide shelter,
even though the forest would keep you nice and dry.
--
Andy Glew, aglew@uiuc.edu