Xref: utzoo comp.arch:12372 comp.sys.intel:1026 comp.sys.ibm.pc:38045
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ico!ism780c!darryl
From: darryl@ism780c.isc.com (Darryl Richman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Compaq find problem with chip
Message-ID: <36340@ism780c.isc.com>
Date: 12 Nov 89 13:02:06 GMT
References: <2719@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> <2725@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> <403@intelisc.nosun.UUCP> <291@berlioz.nsc.com>
Reply-To: darryl@ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman)
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica CA
Lines: 18

In article <291@berlioz.nsc.com> andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head       ) writes:
"I believe the Weitek 4167 (?) boosts 80486 fpt performance by "a factor of
"3 or 4". In any case, how does the coupled 80486/4167 system decide which
"fpt unit will execute a given fpt instruction? and is this a way around the
"bug, temporarily - in that the Weitek would take over the sin/cos/tan stuff?

The Weitek is memory mapped device and works on a completely different
instruction set than the x87.  You can actually configure asystem and get
all three processors running in parallel.  To use a Weitek, you need to
compile for it in advance, and if you don't have one (or an emulator),
such a binary is useless.

		--Darryl Richman
-- 
Copyright (c) 1989 Darryl Richman    The views expressed are the author's alone
darryl@ism780c.isc.com 		      INTERACTIVE Systems Corp.-A Kodak Company
 "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong."
	-- H. L. Mencken