Example:
1.
It highlighted the weakness in the x87 (the FPU), it failed to note that these weakenesses have been rectified in the Pentium+ (Athlon+), with it's "free instructions" and multiple pipes etc... It also failed to note that the new PPC 970 has actually cut back the FPU as it is simply not that important on the desktop, Vector units and 3D GPU's are far more important.
2.
It claims that the PPC has a shorter fatter pipe than the Athlon. Not true the Athlon and PPC have similar sized pipes (which is why their performance is very comparable), it's the Pentium4 that has a long thin pipe. Also the article claims that the PPC 970's pipe is long and thin, but for the PPC some how this is better than the x86... It doesn't explain how or why,(which is not surprising since long and thin has benefits for any architecture when scaling performance, but this article couldn't suggest that the P4 has a more advanced design... could it?)
3.
The Term RISC and CISC has not been used by chip designers for a long time. The chips are now classified by their architecture, rather than the "design Philosiphy". Most CPU's are now "Load-Store". The x86 has a less complex instructin set than some RISCs, and the PPC has the most complex RISC instruction set I've ever seen... Both CPU's share RISC/CISC features, as it's more efficient to use both conceepts.
4.
The Article fails to note that the modern PPC and the medern x86 CPU's are infact very similar chips, they use all the same "tricks" and have all been designed by people who have kept up to date with the latest technology.
5.
The Article says that RISC designs have many more Registers than CISC designs, this is true. But what it fails to mentions is that in order to speed up context switches and due to compiler effieincies many RISC designs implement a register window. That means that the programs on the RISC CPU only see maybe 16 registers not the whole set. (it turns out that 16registers is about spot on foroptimum performance.). This means that the x86 running using register renaming is using it's registers exactly the same as a register window!!!. The x86 has too few registers but the x86-64 has more
There are plenty more, like these.
At the end of the day, I like the PPC, I even own one, and I'm hoping the Motherboard fairy brings me a Pegasos... fingers crossed. But I don't appreciate articles that are just blatent marketing.
You don't need to lie about the PPC to show how good it is!!!
I'm not an x86 Zelot. I simple use what is the most powerful for the money... that's why I bought qan Amiga ad stuck with it for10 years!!!
