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From: bob@islenet.UUCP (Bob Cunningham)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Scientific Computing and mips
Message-ID: <1562@islenet.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Aug-85 04:57:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: islenet.1562
Posted: Sat Aug 31 04:57:04 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Sep-85 09:12:58 EDT
References: <419@kontron.UUCP> <2300001@uicsl> <1093@ames.UUCP> <29898@lanl.ARPA> <1517@peora.UUCP> <30105@lanl.ARPA>
Organization: Hawaii Institute of Geophysics
Lines: 19

> ...
> I don't think a special purpose architecture (e.g. an ap) can
> provide an "easily used" environment, and is therefore at a severe 
> disadvantage in the market...

Which, however, doesn't negate the usefullness of such devices as
specialized co-processors attached to a more general machine.

There are a variety of different types of scientific computation that 
require basically similar mathematical manipulations, e.g. FFTs,
convolution, matrix & vector calculation, etc.

Typical programming practice uses subroutines for these, and there's no
reason not to "plug in" similar calls to an ap in a reasonably transparent
fashion, and take advantage of being able to do those calculations on a
specialized coprocessor.
-- 
Bob Cunningham  {dual|vortex|ihnp4}!islenet!bob
Hawaii Institute of Geophysics