Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rutgers!att!cbnews!mjs
From: mjs@cbnews.ATT.COM (martin.j.shannon)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,comp.periphs
Subject: Designing for the FHF (was Re: Proprietary hardware)
Summary: Design for faster than you can possibly imagine!
Keywords: schematics, repair information, free software foundation,
Message-ID: <4899@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 16 Mar 89 17:56:09 GMT
References: <2140@cpoint.UUCP> <3743@stiatl.UUCP> <1204@naucse.UUCP> <1410@husc6.harvard.edu> <18167@gatech.edu>
Reply-To: mjs@cbnews.ATT.COM (martin.j.shannon)
Followup-To: sci.electronics,comp.periphs
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 31
Xref: utzoo sci.electronics:5571 comp.periphs:1623

In article <18167@gatech.edu> ken@gatech.UUCP (Ken Seefried iii) writes:
>I like the idea of a FHF.  Some friends and I have been discussing a
>'public-domain workstation', a higher-end machine whose design is
>freely availible for anyone to build (look a the GNU license).  The
>idea is to run the GNU kernal when and if it ever becomes availible.
>Then (theoreticly), you could build a workstation for cost of parts
>and time.  We have evaluated several approaches to this design.
>Comments?

Yeah, I'd like to suggest that you design for something better than what
current technology can do now.  Over the last several years, processor speeds
have increased something like a factor of 5, and although ther are claims
that the end is in sight, I mostly don't really believe it.  For instance,
there's a company that's shipping 30MHz 80386-based machines (using hi-spec
25MHz parts) today -- how long will it be before there's a 40MHz "official"
part?  So "we" need to design for an (at least potentially) incredibly fast
bus, and include a large (256K?) cache (the larger the cache, the slower
"main" memory can be), option for hardware floating point, and a "real"
intelligent ports card, and some flavor of Ethernet(TM), and a fast multi-
drive disk controller (SCSI-2 may be a real good standard, speed- and
compatibility-wise), hardware implementation of X-Windows, and (what else do
*you* want to see?) ....

But the main point is to look ahead of what current technology *can* do.

>	...ken seefried iii
>	   ken@gatech.edu

-- 
Marty Shannon; AT&T Bell Labs; Liberty Corner, NJ
(Affiliation given for identification only.)