Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!tank!shamash!nis!sialis!orbit!pnet51!shawn
From: shawn@pnet51.cts.com (Shawn Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: FPE & ORCA/Pascal
Message-ID: <650@orbit.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 89 17:05:27 GMT
Sender: root@orbit.UUCP
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
Lines: 20

keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes:
>I would suspect that the support mentioned for ORCA Pascal is that it calls
>the FP board directly. This would get around the overhead of making calls
>through the Tool Dispatcher, which can be quite significant. Having a chip that
>executes a math operations in a few uSecs would be useless if called through
>a dispatcher that takes 100 uSecs.

So it would be more practical with a faster machine?  Heh.  I think there are
several advantages to making use of a math co-processor through the SANE
tools.  Since SANE is there to be used, and programs DO make use of it,
hooking in the math co-processor would speed up those programs.  Also, it's
nice to have a standard to center around.

I know someone who just recently got an accelerator board for his Mac Plus. 
Additionally, it has a math co-processor that is connected and used via SANE
operations.  He showed me the differences in speed, and I was very impressed. 
I don't really think it's all that worthless...

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