Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!iuvax!maytag!watdragon!gcwilliams
From: gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Graeme Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Acorn RISC Machine memory management
Keywords: ARM, Acorn, MMU, 4MB
Message-ID: <1990Sep24.194432.26087@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 90 19:44:32 GMT
References: <13942@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Sender: gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 28

In article <13942@hydra.gatech.EDU> ken@dali.gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii) writes:
>
>Is Acorn and/or VLSI Technologies working on an updated MMU for the
>ARM?  Surely noone 'round there thinks 32MB processes and a 4MB
>physical memory is remotely adequate....

I hope so - I have one of Acorn's animals (one of the very first
Archimedes, an A310 circa 1987) and have been contemplating
upgrading it as soon as

1. The ARM3 (24Mhz ??) chip becomes available as the CPU (not as an add
   on co-processor). The ARM2 in my machine is only idling at 8Mhz -
   though it'll still blow the doors off of all but the hottest 386's.

2. The MMU is altered so one could extend physical memory to more
   than 4 Mb - I seem to recall that Acorn initially designed the MMU
   to address 64Mb of physical memory, but lopped 4 address lines off
   once in production. Is this so?? If it is, it wouldn't be
   difficult to pop them back on.

As an aside, I'm in Canada and news about Acorn products is
*NON-EXISTANT* - further *NOBODY* I know here has ever heard of an
Archimedes let alone knows what it is, or what it can do! So if
there's anyone out there who could tell me about recent Acorn
products ??? New machines?? Upgrades?? 32-bit colour?? Thanks.

Graeme Williams
gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu