Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pacbell!hoptoad!gnu
From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Why build TF-1 if you have its uniprocessor chips?
Message-ID: <4297@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 1 Apr 88 14:22:26 GMT
References: <12176@brl-adm.ARPA> <1988Mar11.215238.976@utzoo.uucp> <11437@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Organization: Grasshopper Group in San Francisco
Lines: 22

dfk@duke.cs.duke.edu (David Kotz) wrote:
> Each processor:
> single 300-pin CMOS chip has 
> 	50 Mips fixed-point unit
> 	100 Mflop float unit
> 	128 (32 bit) registers
> 	interface to switch (50 Mbytes/s)
> and two 200 Mbyte/s channels to 
> 	4M of data RAM		(=> 128 Gbytes total)
> 	1M of instruction RAM
> Processors are packed 8 to a board (actually 16, all are replicated).

I wouldn't mind a workstation with this 50 MIP chip in it -- maybe a laptop,
since it only takes 1/16th of a board to implement the whole thing,
according to this spec.  What's the catch, does a single CPU/RAM draw more
than 15 amps at 120 volts?

'Twould seem that rather than build one TF-1 with 32,000 chips, you
would do better selling 32,000 workstations (~ half of all the Suns
in existence) that ran 16x as fast as Sun-3's.
-- 
{pyramid,pacbell,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu			  gnu@toad.com
"Don't fuck with the name space!" -- Hugh Daniel