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From: mason@tmsoft.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: NC4016
Message-ID: <176@tmsoft.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Sep-87 22:06:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: tmsoft.176
Posted: Thu Sep  3 22:06:48 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 11:14:07 EDT
References: <36800001@iuvax>
Reply-To: mason@tmsoft.UUCP (Dave Mason)
Followup-To: comp.arch
Organization: TM Software Associates, Toronto
Lines: 33

In article <36800001@iuvax> tenny@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes:
>
>  I saw an article this morning in the current issue of Computer Shopper
>which describes a NC4016 based coprocessor board for the IBM PC. The board
>costs $1,500 and is suppose to deliver 5 MIPS !! Grant it, these may be
>RISC MIPS, 11/780 MIPS, PC MIPS, etc. Does anyone out in netland have
>any more info on the NC4016...like maybe who makes it? Does it really
>deliver 5 (fill in your favorite reference point) MIPS?

It is made by:
	NOVIX
	19925 Stevens Creek Blvd.,Suite 280
	Cupertino, CA 95014

It delivers 5 (they have chips that get 10) FORTH mips.  I was working on
a project that will be using a version of it.  It is quite an impressive
little 16 bit processor.  There is a very complete Forth development
environment (though if you're like me, this is a contradiction in terms).
(BTW a Forth instruction is a Forth word, e.g. '4 3 dup + -' is 5 words
and gives you 2)

One of the nice things about the chip is that it does a subroutine call
in 1 cycle, and returns are often included with the previous instruction.
They have plans to go to 32 bits sometime, but the ideas that I saw that
they had were pretty wasteful architectures & weren't going to increase the
speed very much.

The chip actually gets 1.25 instructions per cycle though (because some
instructions do 2 Forth words (like 'dup +') so it runs at 8MHz for the
10 MIPS, and uses (I believe) 150ns RAMS, so could probably be scaled to
15-20 MIPS with current technology.  Not bad!
	../Dave Mason,	TM Software Associates	(Compilers & System Consulting)
	..!{utzoo uunet!mnetor utcsri utgpu lsuc}!tmsoft!mason