Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!UMIX.CC.UMICH.EDU!krowitz%richter
From: krowitz%richter@UMIX.CC.UMICH.EDU (David Krowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Vector Processors for ATBUS Apollos
Message-ID: <9006131324.AA02254@richter.mit.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 90 13:24:56 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 29

HP has repeatedly stated in public that the new 68040 machines that
are about to be released will have EISA/ISA buses available on them.
They are doing a public announcement for customers in Boston on 
June 19th (ie. less than one week from today). You should be able
to get full product literature from HP/Apollo sales office by this
time next week. As for the current product line (the DN3500/4500) ...
the CPU board has one (DN3500) or two (DN3550, DN4500) connectors
for direct access to the CPU/memory bus in the left most AT-bus
slots. This is how Apollo plugs in their floating point accelerator
(the FPA board) and the 3-D graphics accelerator boards. The boards
occupy the AT slot with the CPU/memory connector, drawing their
electrical power from the AT connector, but performing their
data access via the direct CPU/memory connector. Unfortunately,
the CPU/memory bus connection is *not* described in the "Domain
Series 3000 / Series 4000 Hardware Architecture Handbook". You
will have to work through your sales/service office to get
in touch with the hardware design group. I suspect that the
upcoming 68040 products will also have some sort of internal
CPU/memory bus which is seperate from the EISA/ISA periperal
bus. The CPU's these days are just too damn fast to be sitting
directly on a I/O bus.


 -- David Krowitz

krowitz@richter.mit.edu   (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet
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