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From: gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: RISC Amiga
Keywords: well there's going to be a RISC Mac!!
Message-ID: <1990Oct30.230958.14019@engin.umich.edu>
Date: 30 Oct 90 23:09:58 GMT
References: <1156@iceman.jcu.oz> <22914@grebyn.com>
Sender: news@engin.umich.edu (CAEN Netnews)
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Lines: 35

In article <22914@grebyn.com> ckp@grebyn.UUCP (Checkpoint Technologies) writes:
>In article <1156@iceman.jcu.oz> cpca@iceman.jcu.oz (C Adams) writes:
>>So what would we want a RISC Amiga to be based on, 88k? Sparc? i860? MIPS?
>
>Given the Amiga product philosphy of "inexpensive", I'd have to guess
>the AMD29K.  They're real cheap, and quite fast. After that I think 88K,
>because of the Motorola heritage of the Amiga.  Plus I just read that
>Motorola dropped the price of the 88K chip set, don't remember how low.
>Still much higher than a 68030.

The 040 kills the 88000 in floating point, but the 88000 is much faster
than the 040 in a bunch of other things.

I think that C= is concentrating on delivering excellent price/performance.
The 860 would make an excellent co-processor.  I don't think any chip other
than the 040 is suitable for use as a replacement processor simply because
of code compatability.  Emulating a microprocessor with another uP is SLOW!
Now, can Amiga OS and Amiga UNIX handle multi-processing on a heterogeneous
network of processors?  I can see my Amiga with 2 i860s an i960 and 10
040s.  Of course, my pocketbook can see none of this 8-(

>On the other hand, the 68040 is as fast as current-generation RISC
>chips.  So why go RISC at all?

Eventually, CISC will not be able to keep up.  The design philosophies
in RISC are generally better.  I don't think that cranking up the clockrate
is the answer at all.  Make the instructions themselves run faster.  That
was the philosophy behind IBM in their POWER RISC boxes.  I can tell you
that these machines are VERY nice.  Besides, they can always crank up the
clockrate later 8-)

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