Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT with an '040
Message-ID: <6493@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 89 19:10:17 GMT
References: <331@taniwha.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 36

in article <331@taniwha.UUCP>, paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell) says:

> In article <2460@tank.uchicago.edu> phd_ivo@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:

>>> When will NeXT announce their '040 version? Looking
>>>at the NeXT's system design in Byte a while ago it's pretty obvious
>>>that that's what they designed it for,

>>Not being a hardware engineer, how obvious is it? If so, is that a
>>good argument to wait buying NeXt? Is anything known about the performance
>>leap of the 68040, and---what's more important to me---the performance
>>leap of its accompanying floating point processor?

> I don't know, to me it seems very obvious .... 

> 	Paul

It didn't seem all that obvious to me.  The '040 looks like it would drop
onto a MUXed A-D bus easier than the '030 (save yourself some buffers), but
the reasoning behind the NeXT's motherboard being all MUXed A-D eluded me,
other than the fact that it's a drop into their NuBus-ish bus.  And it 
saves a bit on pin count, at the price of performance.  If they had used
static column DRAMs or some bank-interleaving techniques for system memory,
rather than nybble-mode memory, I'd be inclined to belive they were thinking
more of the '040 than it looks.  I certainly haven't looked down much deeper
than this, though.  Is there some extra interfacing goop (other than the
buffers for the A-D bus) between the '030 and the rest of the system that
might align much better with the significantly different system bus of the
'040?

> Paul Campbell, Taniwha Systems Design, Oakland CA ..!mtxinu!taniwha!paul 

-- 
Dave Haynie  "The 32 Bit Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
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              Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession