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From: ching@amd.AMD.COM (Mike Ching)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Sort Co-Processors
Message-ID: <4544@amd.AMD.COM>
Date: Fri, 9-Oct-87 21:40:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: amd.4544
Posted: Fri Oct  9 21:40:01 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Oct-87 01:00:17 EDT
References: <112@sdeggo.UUCP>
Reply-To: ching@amd.UUCP (Mike Ching)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices
Lines: 13

In article <112@sdeggo.UUCP> dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith) writes:
>Has anyone out there ever run across a sorting co-processor?  I was doodling
>around the other day and it seemed to me that a lot of computers spend a
>lot of time sorting things out.  An add-on box that you could stuff things
>into and pull them back out of in sorted order would be real handy.

AMD has a chip called the 95C85 Content Addressable Data Manager
that performs sorts and searches on its contents. It's 1K bytes and
cascadable with programmable sizes for key and pointer fields. The
part is just reaching the sampling stage after a lengthy pregnancy.

mike ching
Disclaimer: I work in an AMD sales office.