Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!amdahl!oliveb!sun!david
From: david@sun.uucp (David DiGiacomo)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Self-modifying code (hardware BitBlt)
Message-ID: <61292@sun.uucp>
Date: 25 Jul 88 20:27:45 GMT
References: <5254@june.cs.washington.edu> <76700032@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <1988Jul18.231158.19500@utzoo.uucp> <302@laic.UUCP> <1988Jul22.164129.5495@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 19

In article <1988Jul22.164129.5495@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry
Spencer) writes:
>Note that some of the earlier Suns had quite a bit of hardware BitBlt
>assist, and the newer ones don't.  Sun learned.  Commodore will, someday.

This is just my opinion, but I think what Sun learned is that once you
stuck all that other gunk on the CPU board there was no room left for
anything beyond a minimal frame buffer.

The fastest Sun frame buffers currently available are the "CG3" and "CG5"
VME color boards, which have extensive "hardware BitBlt assist".  Of
course, it's all datapath (the notorious rasterop chips) and no sequencing.
The CPU does all the address generation.

P.S. An Amiga-like autonomous "blitter" would be pretty useless in a
virtual memory workstation unless you gave it its own MMU.

-- 
David DiGiacomo, Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, CA  sun!david david@sun.com