Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Self-modifying code
Message-ID: <1988Jul28.170834.6949@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <5254@june.cs.washington.edu> <76700032@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <1988Jul21.202410.20049@utzoo.uucp> <1152@ficc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 88 17:08:34 GMT

In article <1152@ficc.UUCP> peter@ficc.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>On the other hand, at a given speed a 68030 can only go so fast. If you
>can let it do other things while another processor is doing the display,
>then why not? ... hell, given the price
>of the 68030 it might pay Sun to stick an extra one in there to unload
>*all* of the display management from the main CPU.

And when it's not doing display management, of course, it can run user
programs.  Congratulations!  You have just re-invented the multiprocessor
system.  The Wheel of Reincarnation strikes again.  The more smarts you
put in your display processor, the more it resembles a somewhat-crippled
main processor.  You get a much more useful system if you break down and
admit that you're building a multiprocessor machine, and make all the
CPUs general-purpose.
-- 
MSDOS is not dead, it just     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
smells that way.               | uunet!mnetor!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu