> four independent instructions at the same time.  Nice.  But, if you
> actually _have_ four threads of execution ready to go, there's no need to
> be deviously clever--you've got four independent instructions in your hand
> for free.  MT is thus not a way to use more than one CPU, but rather a

Oh, how refreshing to hear someone else say this.

I've been watching for this since 1992 (the year I took a VLSI design class
and saw how easy it is to eliminate delay slots if you're just willing to
require multiple threads in the air at once).

BTW the prof and grad students for that course left the next year to found
MyriCom, a somewhat quixotic competitor to GigE and other high-speed network
technologies. Their "Lanai" microcontroller is based on a heavily cleaned up
descendant of our class design :)

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com