[Arm-netbook] libre 64-bit risc-v SoC

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 2:57 PM, Hendrik Boom <hendrik at topoi.pooq.com> wrote:

> Let me remind you of a real-world situation.  The hardware designers
> were woring on the second version of their successful CPU.  They
> attached some counters to masure hos many times the varioun
> instructons were being executed.  THey discovered that the most
> common instructons were certain test and brnch instructions.  So they
> worked hard on making sure the next model had the most efficient
> implementation of those test and branch instructions they could
> achieve.
>
> But when they finally put the new machine together and tried it out,
> they foud no improvement at all.
>
> Investigating, they discovered they had optimized the wait loop.

 that is ffrickin funny.  but also relevant, as i am aware of for
example the ICT's efforts to add x86-accelerating instructions to the
Loongson 2G architecture.  although a MIPS64 they added
hardware-emulation of the "top" 200 x86 instructions to achieve a qemu
emulation that was 70% of actual x86 clock-rates.

 which got me thinking: how the heck would you guage which actual
instructions were "top"?  would it be better instead to measure
_power_ consumption per instruction, aiming for better
performance/watt?

l.