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From: grenley@nsc.nsc.com (George Grenley)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: VME/68020 Multiprocessor boards
Message-ID: <4711@nsc.nsc.com>
Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 22:18:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.4711
Posted: Mon Oct 19 22:18:32 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Oct-87 06:18:51 EDT
References: <44165@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV>
Reply-To: grenley@nsc.UUCP (George Grenley)
Organization: National Semiconductor, Sunnyvale
Lines: 32


Warning, this might be construed as a product plug, but then again,
you may also find it useful...

In article <44165@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> mo@seismo.CSS.GOV (Mike O'Dell) writes:

>I am looking for recommendations based on real experience
>regarding VME-based 68020 boards which are to be
>used in a multiprocessor system.  

May I recommend an alternate processor?  If your intended application is
CPU intensive (which I assume it is since you want multiprocessing), you
will probably be interested in very high performance CPUs.  My kind, generous
and wise employer (it's coming up on salary review time, folks) makes
a VME cpu board based on our 32532 cpu chip.  The '532 is very powerful,
about 9600 dhrystones at 20 mhz on our VME board.  The board has the cpu,
fpu, 2 sio, and 4-16meg of local ram (dual ported).  It also has inter-
processor interrupts, and each cpu has a user selectable ID number (1-16)
to make multi processor systems easy.  The CPU itself has on chip MMU and
on chip cache.  We don't give em away ($9900) but it IS the hotrod VME
board available on the market now.

BTW, the reason I know this is I'm the project leader for this board - that's
right, folks, a real engineer, not a marketing flack.  So, call your NSC
sales person, etc.


>Further, recommendations for VME/SCSI controllers is
>also welcomed.  

I'm real fond of Ciprico's stuff.  We've used it with no problems.  Interphase,
on the other hand, is junk - their SCSI in particular.