Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Sorry Guys, There is NO WAY!
Keywords: AMIGA 3000 vs NEXT
Message-ID: <16461@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 11 Dec 90 20:15:13 GMT
References: <14701@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <21993@well.sf.ca.us> <16588@brahms.udel.edu> <22047@well.sf.ca.us>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 33

In article <22047@well.sf.ca.us> yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) writes:
>The questions just keep on coming, so here are some more questions and answers:

>>What NeXT hardware is there with multiprocessing capabilities.

>I assume you mean "parallel processing."  

No, you're confused.  They mean multiprocessing, which is virtually the same
thing as parallel processing.  Simply saying "multiprocessing" usually has
the connotation of homogenous multiprocessing -- "I have five '030s here, and
I schedule the next task on the first one that frees up".  This isn't in
common use on small systems yet, though heterogenous multiprocessing is getting
quite common -- "I'll have the blitter draw this line, then the DMAC get this
file for me, then fetch a block of data from my ethernet processor, then 
get the serial packets the IOP on my multiserial board boxed up nicely for
me", etc.

>The NeXT, thanks to Unix, is a multiprocessing computer.  

That's multitasking.  Task swaping.  The NeXT has a single processor (it really
has the DSP as well, but that doesn't enter into any system work), and it
schedules multiple tasks on that processor.  There is a version of the Mach
kernel at CMU that supports task scheduling on multiple processors, thus,
multiprocessing.  I don't believe that capability is in the NeXT kernel at
the moment.  It is also not in the UNIX kernel at the moment, either.  AT&T
does expect to support multiprocessing beyond SV.4, and its not unreasonable
to expect NeXT to support it either in a future release, though that'll only
be useful on the "cube" machines.

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
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		"I can't drive 55"	-Sammy Hagar