The Propeller in Perspective

Kevin Wood

Can anybody give some perspective on how the Propeller compares with common microprocessors? For instance, what would be the closest equivalent in x86 architecture? Or 68K Motorola? Etc...

This isn't a loaded question, nor about architectural differences, but I'm just looking for a frame of reference for some design possibilities.

So saying that it is <hypotheyically> the equivalent capability of say, a 33MHz i486, gives a general reference point to work from.

Thanks.

Electronegativity

Hi Kevin.

I'm not the best person to answer this question, but this is what I have figured out:

160 million instructions per second and a 32 bit architechture put the propeller on par with a 166 megahertz Pentium if your application is perfectly parallizable. In practice this is rarely the case, but with decent code it would probably compare well with a 33 MHz CPU in most applications.

One of the real advantages of Propeller over Pentium is ease of board layout.
Imagine a Pentium CPU on a motherboard in one hand and a Propeller development board in the other.

Another issue is power consumption, especially if you don't want to be perpetually tethered to a wall outlet.

Here's an interesting design possibility for you:

Imagine this with a Propeller in place of the FPGA
www.xess.com/prod035.php3

It would be a super monster propeller concarne!

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I wonder if this wire is hot...

inaki

I think you cannot compare it with a regular microprocessor. In a Pentium you·have·MBs of memory, an MMU,·floating point,...·!
The Propeller·is a microcontroller. A would better ask how it compares to the latest microcontrollers in the market.



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Gadgetman

From what I have seen, very few microcontrollers offers 32bit processing, and those that do, are usually CISC, squandering speed for a larger instruction-set.
The Propeller on the other hand is so far into RISC that it's probably in a league of its own(I can't remember seeing anything this efficient. Not that I program a lot, but I enjoy reading about stuff... Real hardcore nerd)

On its own a COG doesn't have much to distinguish itself, there are faster microcontrollers out there, but when connected together, they make something completely new, so there's in fact nothing it can be compared to.

While the Propeller won't impact on the 'mainstream' CPUs like the Pentium-types, large ARM chips and the likes, I have a sneaking suspicion that we'll see at least some of the concepts from it showing up in other microcontrollers in a couple of years...

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