Order of the Butterfly
Posts: 365 from 2003/3/28
Quote:
ARM does have some features that hold it back (in order again, therefore zero branch prediction, etc).
Why do you think in-order processors have no branch prediction?
The ARM10 had it over a decade ago and that was an in-order design.
Also, in-order does not automatically mean slow. It really depends what you are running. Things like Cell and GPUs are all in-order but they're very fast processors.
In-order becomes a problem if you are trying to run "control" code at high speed. Things like "data" processing heavy (think video, image, audio processing and even games) get relatively little advantage from out-of-order, so processors focused on data processing only tend to be in-order or at best only mildly out-of-order.
e.g. The new Freescale parts designed for networking appear to be "mildly" out-of-order, nothing compared to even a G5.
