Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!tektronix!tekig5!wayneck
From: wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: quest for breakthroughs (long)
Keywords: architecture, breakthrough, technology
Message-ID: <3780@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM>
Date: 14 Feb 89 16:44:25 GMT
References: <740@tetons.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 45


Well, I'll jump.

I'm interested in computer animation.  The biggest problem
I face is memory bandwidth.  Compared to that everything
else is minor second-order effects.  So here is what I'd
like to see:

   1. RISC is nice since it has lots of registers, but bad
      because there are too many instruction to be excuted
      to do anything.

   2. CISC is nice in that one instruction can do a lot of
      things with one little instruction, but you only get
      a handful of registers.  So you always hitting memory
      to get your data.

   3. Memory caches are nice but, there is very little control  
      over what stays in the cache. 

So what I'd like to see is a two fold solution:

    1. RCISC - Register enhanced CISC.
       Take something like 680xx, paste in a couple kbytes of
       registers that can also hold code.  Use a few of the
       unimplemeted opcodes to give access to the new memory
       bank.  This would allow one to really reduce memory 
       accesses durning intense interactive graphics by putting
       some of the routines into the RAM bank and also common
       data would go in there.  Also since this would be on 
       chip RAM, programs would excute much quicker there and
       data access would be fast.  Along with this would have
       to be a tagging system to allow tasks to grab chunks to
       RAM bank so you could allow old-fashion multitasking
       programs to run. 

    2. OS cops to stop all OS writers from using the RAM bank.
       Power to the programmers, keep the OS to just the 
       standard registers.  This would keep overhead low, and
       even allow cheap context switches.  Let's not waste
       great hardware on PIG style OSs.  After all the only good
       OS is one that doesn't get in your way.


                                    Wayne Knapp