NJ5 on 06 December 2008
@MikeB: I never said having headroom was a bad thing from the hardware capabilities perspective. It is however something which software developers try to avoid, since every unused cycle is a cycle wasted. The fact that optimization can give even more headroom still remains of course, and obviously optimization will be done if more spare cycles are needed.
When I talked about SPEs waiting for each other I just mentioned it as an indication that multi-core engines have a hard time fully tapping the CPUs due to the inherent difficulties and limitations of making multi-core engines. There will almost always be some wasted CPU cycles in complex multi-threaded applications with interdependent parts.
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