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Thu Apr 15 14:20:34 EDT 2004 · http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-April/044305.html

>     Tim> What makes the current stepping of some flavor of P4
> overwhelmingly
>     Tim> important <0.3 wink>?
> 
> Unrelated to this thread, what does "stepping" mean?  A quick Google
> search
> for "Pentium stepping glossary" yielded this page
> 
>   http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/help3.asp
> 
> but doesn't explain why Intel uses "stepping" instead of "version" or
> "revision".

[Channeling Tim]

In this context, "stepping" means all of the idiosyncratic
implementation details of processor workflow.

The word "stepping" is natural after staring at Gantt charts showing
timings, data dependencies, speculative execution, and parallel
operations.

Tim is advising me to against focusing on one processor at one point in
history because the "stepping" is guaranteed to change over time.

Raymond Hettinger 

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