Path: csiph.com!xmission!usenet.csail.mit.edu!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: "minf...@arcor.de" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2021 14:07:35 -0700 (PDT) Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 32 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <21-07-025@comp.compilers> References: <21-07-004@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="7181"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: history, architecture, comment Posted-Date: 27 Jul 2021 17:54:35 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com In-Reply-To: <21-07-004@comp.compilers> Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:2689 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]