Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!ecicrl!robohack!sanwalk From: sanwalk@robohack.UUCP (A. Roy Sanwalka) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: NeXT rumours from MacWeek Summary: Yes, it really does take years... Keywords: Motorola 030 040 Intel i386 i486 Message-ID: <1990Jul5.143931.28749@robohack.UUCP> Date: 5 Jul 90 14:39:31 GMT References: <1990Jun28.184153.27766@midway.uchicago.edu> <680032@hpcuhc.HP.COM> Followup-To: comp.sys.next Organization: University of Toronto Electrical Engineering - u9T3 Lines: 72 In article <680032@hpcuhc.HP.COM> edwardm@hpcuhc.HP.COM (Edward McClanahan) writes: > Bruce Henderson writes: > > > A couple of Next rumours from MacWeek's "Mac the Knife" page: > > > > > 50 MHz 68040 machine which will be in a Sun-like pizza box. It will have no > > > OD, but a 2.8 MB floppy instead. Code name is "Warp 9". > > > > Come on people! Get a grip on yourselves! What is wrong with this picture... > > I agree that the 50MHz '040 won't be out for some time, but I question the > term "YEARS" - that is, I'm assuming they fix their problems with the 25MHz > version soon. > > If I'm not mistaken, it didn't take that long to go from 25 to 50 MHz on the > '030. And to compare apples to oranges, Intel seemed to take little time > going from 25 to 33 MHz on their 486. Note in both cases that the manufacturer > had produced this speed up on the previous chip (making a similar speedup on > their latest chip easier?). (I refer to Motorola's '030 and Intel's 386.) I think we need to review our dates a bit here. As I know more about Intel parts (and believe me, I'm not proud of it :-), I'll keep my comments on the i386 and i486 for now. The i386DX at 16 MHz was developed in 1985. The i386SX at 16 MHz was developed in 1986. The current high end i386DX runs at 33 MHz and the high end i386SX runs at 20 MHz (1990). Intel claims it will be at least second quarter 1991 before the new 40 MHz i386DX and 25 MHz i386SX are released. All these figures refer to development of QUANTITY parts, which are the only ones relevant to systems manufacturers. As well, simply judging by the difference between release dates for systems (a fairly good indicator in the Intel world, maybe not so good for Motorola), the original 16 MHz 68030 based Mac IIx outdated the current (correct me if I'm wrong here) 40 MHz 68030 based Mac IIfx by at least 3 years by my reckoning. I would say that MacWeek, or at least "Mac the Knife", needs a serious dose of reality. Neither NeXT nor any other systems manufacturer is likely to have any short term (ie. under 18 months) plan for release of a 50 MHz 68040 based system. One last note to dispell MacWeek's article as just hot air: If you stop to consider NeXT's current direction re: mass storage, and then consider that Canon introduced a 32 ms access time 512 MB optical drive two months ago, you will soon realize that by the time the 50 MHz '040 is ready NeXT will be unlikely to go with a dying technology like a 2.8 MB conventional (or optically guided) floppy drive. > Question: I understand that the Nubus in the NeXT runs at 25MHz itself (a > substantial speedup over the Mac II's 10MHz Nubus). Though the > memory resides on the same card as the CPU, what should we expect > in "overall" performance speedup when just the CPU is improved? This depends a lot on Motorola's implementation of the 50 MHz '040: if the stick to a straight clock upgrade (like Intel did with the i386DX/20 to i386DX/25), then expect a sublinear speedup after accounting for the new timing sync. overhead. If the instead decide to rework parts of the chip (like Intel claims it will with the i486/33 to i486/40 upgrade), then expect a linear or even superlinear (though not spectacularly so) performance improvement. So much for my $0.02... P.S. - I have nothing for or against MacWeek, other than a basic objection towards publications that put out "rumour-mill" columns like "Mac the Knife" or even Byte magazine's Dvorak's "Inside Track". Nonetheless, I still read both and have yet to cancel my subscriptions... -- | A. Roy Sanwalka a.k.a. sanwalk@robohack sanwalk@contact | | #include sanwalk@ecf.{toronto.edu, utoronto.ca} | | `Undergraduate Electrical Engineer and Guru-in-training!' | | "People who think they know it all really annoy those of us who do" |