Hi,
Feeling really intelligent today.. I would like to know some basic stuff..
What is the difference between a hardware implementation of an algorithm and a software one.
How do you say an algorithm is faster in one and slower in other.. if it's based on timing how do you do that?? What makes it faster in one and not in other??
all the help is appreciated.
OP.
~/cvs> whois 128.193.4.98
OrgName: Oregon State University OrgID: OSU-3 Address: Network Services Address: Milne Hall 217 City: Corvallis StateProv: OR PostalCode: 97331 Country: US
Why not walk into the uni library and get yourself a book? (Feeling really smart pants today ...)
Everything is essentially done in hardware. A processor is hardware. I guess the main difference is when you build the hardware for a less general application. Generally, the hardware implementation will be more parallel to make it faster. The more parallelism, the more hardware you need, and the faster the operation.
-Kevin
Except if it is microcoded, then it is software even though it looks like hardware. You can never be too sure. It could still be faster than non-microcoded versions, too!
-- glen
Hardware implementations tend to be faster because the parallelize the work to be done. As example take a multiplication. It can be done in software by shift & add or with a hardware multiplier which does if required the lot in one clock cycle.
Rene
-- Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com & commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net
It's all hardware. If it's not hardware, it's not doing anything (see question below).
The faster one is the one that takes less time to do whatever it was that you wanted done. This involves actually doing the thing in question. Only hardware actually does stuff, therefore, ipso facto, hardware is faster.
As my Dad used to say: as fast as ten thousand gazebos.
-- Andrew
Hardware implementation would be like floating point mathematics in DSP microcontroller, so DSP has instructions which dirrectly execute in processor in 1 cycle, and software implementation would take
50 or something like that instructions on processor that doesn't have floating point math hardware.It should be obvious from my answer to previous question.
You can look on hardware solution as a washing machine, you can wash faster with it than by hands (software approach), to get the same quality.
Mickey
Hello OP,
h> Feeling really intelligent today.. I would like to know some basic
HW & SW are uncomparable in general because SW w/o HW makes no sence.
In some context you speak of HW or SW solution when you mean the decission to use either
- a general purpose CPU (eg. micro controller) and write the appropriate SW for this CPU or
- build an ASIC (application specific IC, could of course be a fpga too) that solves your problem.
In general is an ASIC faster and fits better in your special needs for reliability, power consumption and size, but tends to be more expensive (unless huge quantities) and you have big trouble when you find a better algorithm for your problem. You would think twice before using an ASIC for data compression on the other hand it's impossible to do very high speed realtime data processing (eg. 10GB Switch) with a CPU.
bye Thomas
And what do you say if the native programming language for a cpu is very friendly to running event driven and parallel code such as Occam or better still HDL. Then you can write something like Verilog or HandelC on a cpu and call it HW at least for some types of apps that might actually be HW or SW. And you can take that same code or pieces of it and synth it into HW too with synthesis for some speedups if you know what you are doing. What would be the natural way for the HW(SW) to communicate with the SW(HW), probably messages at the interface between event scheduler and actual HW. occam made this sound easy, but HDL needs some thinking about.
I am surprised nobody really answered to the point!
Software is when sequencing through the algorithm is done using INSTRUCTION power
Hardware is when sequencing through the algorithm is done using LOGIC power...!!!
INSTRUCTION
That was because there really *was* no point to the original posting.
And since "INSTRUCTION power" is just a special type of "LOGIC power", we've come full circle back to the original question.
-- Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de) Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.
So, if the software isn't doing anything, then the hardware should perform identically if we remove it, yes?
What kind of "stuff" does a PC do without any software? It's a reliable paperweight, but not much else.
No hardware will do anything at all unless it's instructed to do so. Whether such instruction comes from software, firmware, or liveware doesn't alter that.
This all reminds me of some "definitions" from way back in the '80s:
If you can see it, and you can touch it, then it's Real. If you can touch it, but you can't see it, then it's Logical. If you can see it, but you can't touch it, then it's Virtual. If you can't see it, nor touch it, then it's Gone.
-- Max
As other posters have indicated, yes.
Who was talking about a PC? The original poster was referring to "a hardware implementation of an algorithm and a software one."
I'm sure, among others, ASIC manufactures would beg to differ... there are many hardware implementations (both within chips and as discrete circuits) that require no "instructions" in order to power up and be fully functional.
Have fun,
Marc
--
--Ray Andraka, P.E. President, the Andraka Consulting Group, Inc.
401/884-7930 Fax 401/884-7950 email snipped-for-privacy@andraka.com"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, 1759
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.