Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: dedicated vs general-purpose CPUs
Message-ID: <1988Aug7.013952.7842@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <5254@june.cs.washington.edu> <76700032@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <1988Aug3.180947.12070@utzoo.uucp> <1221@ficc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 7 Aug 88 01:39:52 GMT

In article <1221@ficc.UUCP> peter@ficc.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> do you want your CPU power in one block that you can allocate as you please,
>> or divided up into fixed-size chunks, most of which are not under your
>> control?
>
>As big a block as possible. Unfortunately in the real world cheap computers
>(such as Amigas or Suns or IRISes) have to use prepackaged parts...
>So, you *have* to use fixed size blocks. Once you have pulled all the
>power you can out of your 680x0 or RISC chip, and you need more MIPS,
>you have to add more processors.  So, you have the graphics (and serial-IO
>and disk IO and any other IO you care to name) wheel of life.
>The other alternative is to build your own custom [processor]...

You forgot the third alternative:  add a second (third, etc.) 680x0 or
RISC or whatever.  That adds to your pool of centrally-managed power,
rather than balkanizing it as specialized auxiliary processors do.  A
multiprocessor system isn't quite as good as one fast processor, but with
competent designers it can come close.
-- 
MSDOS is not dead, it just     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
smells that way.               | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu