Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!news From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: Blitter vs. 040 (was: Computer Architecture question Message-ID: Date: 11 May 91 11:55:20 GMT References: <1991May9.070349.15151@neon.Stanford.EDU> <3496.tnews@templar.actrix.gen.nz> <1991May10.180908.29565@convex.com> <6o6Hk!=@cs.psu.edu> <48817@ut-emx.uucp> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Penn State Computer Science Lines: 44 In-Reply-To: greg@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu's message of 11 May 91 07:20:10 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: sunws5.sys.cs.psu.edu In article <48817@ut-emx.uucp> greg@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Greg Harp) writes: Well, we all know the 040 can do it. In fact, Steve said (and I of course deleted it before I thought I might refer to it (: ) that he wasn't interested in how much the 040 can do, but what can be done on the NeXT with its architecture and OS. I think Mach + NeXTStep is a pretty powerful combo. It should have some longevity. It's probably one of the reasons NeXT has Word Perfect and Improv; they were relatively easy to write on the NeXT. Think we will see a Windows version of Improv anytime soon? Hopefully, by making it easier on developers, a few more will port their products. If Mach can't be interrupted directly that could be a problem. However, with nothing else really running on the machine you should be able to get the CPU time to do a decent job. You can't interrupt Mach. NeXT might be addressing this problem. They did mention it in NeXTAnswers, but if it's a lot of work(it might be), who knows how long it will take. That's the question Steve asked, I believe. I'm wondering the same thing myself. Also, would you have to do anything "funny" to directly access the display memory? You know, Mach/BSD might have something to say about a program hitting the memory in a place not assigned to it. Memory is swapped to disk, or more appropriately removed from memory, when you run out of memory on the NeXT to make room for whatever you are doing at the time. Also, on the NeXT most drawing is done(all that I can think of) by called library routines. Also, hitting the hardware directly kills all that nice device independance, you know. :) (I _had_ to say it...) And it screws you when the NeXT generation of machine is released. In fact, I doubt if developers write to the display buffer on the NeXT. The Color NeXT and the NeXTDimension board would surely have broken any software that did this. Call those highly optimized library routines. They know what to do when you've got awesome graphics hardware on your computer(or don't have...). -Mike