P4 piece hertz reader's feelings

Math/CS major James Perry has got a bee in his bonnet about Mike Magee's Pentium 4 Foster may sink the Itanic.

I'm writing this since I think someone needs to correct the general misconception surrounding the Itanium that many people have - particularly Register journalists.

In particular, in your article you state: "Will they [Itaniums] ever reach the giggle hurtz speeds that Foster and the Pentium 4 seem capable of now?"

The IA64's architecture is completely different from that of the IA32's, particularly when it comes to what happens each clock-cycle. The Itanium uses a technique called VLIW(Very Long Instruction Word) where each instruction package is actually 3 instructions that the CPU procedes to execute /in parallel/. Hence, during each clock-cycle an Itanium executes at least 3 instructions whereas a P4 runs barely more than 1.

Now if the Itanium were to run only a single instruction per clock, like the P4 does, it'd be clocking in at around _2ghz_. So excuse me, but what was that about 'giggle hurtz' speeds? (And yes, I know I'm simplifying things a lot. The IA64 architecture specifies even more goodies such as speculative execution.)

You guys should bother checking your facts before writing up this BS.

Right on brother. Anyone want to reply to this one?