On Fri, 2010-10-29 at 02:46 +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > On Friday, October 29, 2010 00:30:51 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > > On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 21:36 +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > > > But I've never heard of a processor that has a "search" instruction > > > implemented in hardware. :-) > > > > Depends what you mean by hardware. I'm pretty sure some special-purpose > > machines (Lisp and Prolog machines come to mind) had string searching in > > microcode. Some VLSI designs for string-searching hardware come up if > > you do a Google search (!) but I doubt if any have actually been > > exploited commercially. > > Oh, I was referring to today's typical Intel compatible processors. The OP was > asking about how is search being performed with common PC hardware, so my > comments were in that scope. > > But you are right, surely some custom string-searching hardware has probably > been developed and made, it can probably be very useful in situations with > specific need for that type of functionality. :-) Actually I'd say that so far it hasn't really panned out, for the same reason that general-purpose hardware defeated those special-purpose machines I mentioned: the market is too small for them so development is relatively slow, thus the apparent attractions of "doing it in hardware" aren't enough to compensate, i.e. by the time you get your special machine out the door the now-standard off-the-shelf parts can knock the socks off it. The exception that proves the rule is graphics cards, where there is a huge market that makes the special-purpose hardware worthwhile. To paraphrase an old saying, if it doesn't make economic sense it isn't engineering. poc -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
