Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!joyce!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!rutgers!att!whuts!homxb!houxs!beyer
From: beyer@houxs.UUCP (J.BEYER)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Are all RISCs the same?
Summary: Real-time high-performance
Message-ID: <984@houxs.UUCP>
Date: 12 Sep 88 13:47:13 GMT
References: <58@zeno.MN.ORG> <6903@aw.sei.cmu.edu> <22860@amdcad.AMD.COM> <5708@sundc.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 20

In article <5708@sundc.UUCP>, bwong@sundc.UUCP (Brian Wong) writes:
> 
> Perhaps I was asleep during my college classes, but to me,
> realtime !nessarily= highPerformance.  Quick perceptual response, and high
> performance in general are certainly goals for all workstation design
> engineers.  But I don't think that the (strict) requirements of real time
> are necessary in the general case.

What I learned about in designing real-time systems (which I haven't done
for many years now) is that the results must be available SOON ENOUGH.
Whether this is seconds or nanoseconds depended upon the application.
If a machine were too fast, software could always delay  the presentation
of the results until the load was able to absorb it. Of course, there are
better and worse ways to provided the needed delay (if there were a need
to delay an early output at all).


-- 
Jean-David Beyer
A.T.&T., Holmdel, New Jersey, 07733
houxs!beyer