Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!spdcc!merk!alliant!linus!ramsdell
From: ramsdell@linus.mitre.org (John D. Ramsdell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: RISC Coprocessor Boards
Message-ID: <112780@linus.mitre.org>
Date: 9 Jul 90 14:29:33 GMT
Reply-To: ramsdell@mitre.org
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford MA
Lines: 14

It seems that NeXT is committed to the use of antiquated CPU's.  The
best reason I have heard is that the company cannot afford to support
two platforms which are not binary compatible.  This excuse was stated
by Bruce Henderson in issue 7 of NeXT User's Journal.  While there may
be sound reasons why NeXT cannot provide a RISC CPU, I see no reason
why another vendor could not sell an add-on board which could plug
into one of the extra slots.  This would require the release of the
missing bus chip, but I image the new board could be priced to be
competitive with the `40 upgrade.  I would be happy to run my CPU
intensive computations on say a MC88000 which communicates to the rest
of the system via Mach messages.  Are there any RISC-based
coprocessors on the horizon?

John