Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ig!arizona!bakken
From: bakken@arizona.edu (Dave Bakken)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: 80860 as a math processor
Summary: 80960 is also decent Intel silicon
Keywords: Nothing to do with Portal
Message-ID: <10307@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 15 Apr 89 15:46:31 GMT
References: <14716@gryphon.COM>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 19

In article <14716@gryphon.COM>, richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
> Yes, the 80860 looks like the only decent piece of silicon to come
> out of intel since the 8051.
Close.  Their 80960 (aka p7), which is targetted for embedded 
applications, is very interesting.  It has good performance, but has
a 4 deep register cache (registers map into the stack frame) and, more
significantly, the hardware can schedule tasks for you. (Interestingly,
but perhaps not surprisingly, I have not seen one trade rag mention the
HW scheduling.  About 1.5 years ago I benchmarked Ada on the chip and 
worked on a debug monitor for it, and I think that feature is 
very significant).  Also, I think they are offering versions with 
fault tolerant support (last I heard it was QMR, not TMR, 
unfortunately).  Of course, this chip will live in niche applications 
that most of us never see.
-- 
Dave Bakken
bakken@arizona.edu
uunet!arizona!bakken
"The fact that I'm paranoid doesn't prove everyone's *not* out to get me"