Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!mtxinu!taniwha!paul
From: paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Next computer (Re: CISC Silent Spring)
Message-ID: <486@taniwha.UUCP>
Date: 7 Feb 90 17:02:21 GMT
References: <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU> <20056@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell)
Organization: Taniwha Systems Design, Oakland
Lines: 24

In article <20056@netnews.upenn.edu> iyengar@grad2.cis.upenn.edu.UUCP (Anand Iyengar) writes:
>In article <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU> underdog@portia.Stanford.EDU (Dwight Joe) writes:
>>I know.  Steve's going to upgrade the NEXT to a 68040.
>>Even then, the Sparc chip set is faster.
>	That depends on how much faster "faster" is.  I'd argue that the nExt
>needed to be faster from the start, but not for just number-crunching.  Even
>starting up an (graphical) application on the nExt takes too long (insert
>magic numbers for acceptable response in an interactive environment here).
>I'm not sure that the 68040 will (or won't -- wait until it gets here) make

Look closely at the architecture (try the Byte article), the NeXT board
multiplexes data/addresses from the '030 to make it look like the '040
(or NuBus) - this means that their silicon is probably already set up
for the '040, my bet is that Steve is just waiting for the parts in
quantities/prices that he can afford to ship them. BTW I think he lucked
out on the '040 bus interface, my guess is that the reason that it looks
so much like NuBus is because Apple buys the most 68ks.

	Paul

-- 
Paul Campbell    UUCP: ..!mtxinu!taniwha!paul     AppleLink: CAMPBELL.P
You know there's something wrong when 100,000 people marching in Moscow
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