Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ncar!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: PostScript chip
Summary: Is a special chip necessary?  How 'bout just a fast one?
Message-ID: <5426@ico.ISC.COM>
Date: 25 May 88 18:49:53 GMT
References: <96@hrsw2.UUCP>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp, Boulder, CO
Lines: 25

In article <96@hrsw2.UUCP>, bakken@hrsw2.UUCP (David E. Bakken) writes:
> Is any semiconductor vendor working on a PostScript chip?  I know
> someone came out with a Forth chip, and I seem to recall hearing
> something about a PostScript one...

Would a PostScript chip have enough to offer to make it worthwhile?
Although PostScript has some syntactic and structural resemblances to
Forth, the real work in PostScript happens in the font and graphics
operations.  Wouldn't it be just as good to use some very fast general-
purpose processor?  I think you can make a good case for something on the
order of the MIPS processors in a fast printer (anything trying to achieve
a true speed of, say, 25 ppm or more).

One reason for asking this is the results that people seem to have found
for special hardware for fast raster displays:  Unless you're able to build
some fancy, very fast hardware and do it very carefully, you're better off
with a fast vanilla processor.  (See, for example, the Pike/Locanthi paper
in Software P&E about the Blit a few years ago.)

Maybe somebody who knows the innards of PostScript (?Glenn?) and knows what
hardware you've already got for the print engine could comment on whether
you could make major gains with a special processor.
-- 
Dick Dunn      UUCP: {ncar,cbosgd,nbires}!ico!rcd       (303)449-2870
   ...If you get confused just listen to the music play...