> Don't mean to nit pick but I would have thought the SX was more
> deterministic than a PC.

Tom, you missed my point. "Deterministic" is not limited to microsecond
timing. Measuring a system's determinism may not even have anything to do
with tight timing and interrupt latency and such.

I'd be a fool to argue about a comparison between the pentium and the scenix
with regard to measuring microseconds of interrupt latency or any similar
measurement. The point that I somehow failed to communicate is there is more
(or other) aspects to deterministic behavior than "timing".



> True a SX may have non-deterministic
> jitter but
> that's about it.

Therefore, given very tight *timing* criteria (femto-second) the SX is non
deterministic.

> While any system with a cache like a PC is very
> non-deterministic as depending on the last instruction
> executed (well, the
> data it used anyway) an instruction could take more or less time.

Given loose timing criteria (or no timing criteria) the Pentium running a
faulty DOS program in a "DOS box" under a poorly installed version of Win95
can be deterministic.

OK, I use a little exaggeration to illustrate my point.


Dan mentioned that this degraded into an argument about the meaning of
"deterministic" and a language war. My effort was intended to educate that
"deterministic" has broader meaning.

Let me quote a handsome, generous, and wonderful human being:
> Regardless of the processor type and/or the language in which it is
> programmed, predictable outputs (perhaps time, perhaps not)
> measured from
> specific inputs is what determinism is about.


-Rob

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