Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.compilers > #2689

Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations?

Show all headers | View raw

Roger L Costello schrieb am Mittwoch, 14. Juli 2021 um 21:42:37 UTC+2:
> Hello Compiler Experts!
>
> As I understand it, computers were originally designed to do arithmetic
> computations and in the old days nearly 100% of a CPU's work involved
> arithmetic computations.
>
> I look at what I now do on a daily basis with computers and it is primarily
> text processing. My guess is that "text processing" at the machine level
> mostly means doing comparisons and moving things into and out of
> memory/registers; that is, not much in the way of arithmetic computations. Is
> that correct?
>
> These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic
> computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations?
>
> /Roger
> [I don't think it was ever true except perhaps on the ENIAC. Also, what do
> you mean by arithmetic? Are the additions and multiplications to do indexing
> and array addresssing arithmetic? If you mean floating point. there wasn't
> any floating point hardware until the IBM 704 in 1954 but there was plenty
> of computing before that. -John]

Cryptocurrency mining does not involve lots of text processing.  ;-)
Computational weather forecasting neither, or medical image processing .. etc etc ..
Define your application domain and you get a different response

From historic perspective, a big driver for developing "computation machines"
had been military applications. Specifically artillery computers.
[Unless someone can return this thread to compilers, I think it would better fit
in comp.arch and alt.folklore.computers, both of which regularly discuss old
computer designs. -John]

Back to comp.compilers | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Find similar

Thread

These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2021-07-14 18:30 +0000
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-07-15 02:31 -0700
    Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2021-07-15 22:02 +0200
    Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2021-07-16 14:47 +1000
    Re: fast arithmetic hardware, was These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-07-15 23:49 -0700
      Re: fast arithmetic hardware, was These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2021-07-16 16:22 -0400
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2021-07-16 15:12 +1000
    Re: ancient floating point, These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-07-16 18:31 +0200
      Re: ancient floating point, These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2021-07-17 23:14 +0200
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? Derek Jones <derek@NOSPAM-knosof.co.uk> - 2021-07-19 15:35 +0100
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? "minf...@arcor.de" <minforth@arcor.de> - 2021-07-27 14:07 -0700

csiph-web