Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ogicse!emory!mephisto!gatech!galbp!mm!ken
From: ken@mm.uucp (Ken Seefried iii)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Multi-processor NeXT ( was: Re: Next computer )
Message-ID: <1990Feb8.153727.13525@mm.uucp>
Date: 8 Feb 90 15:37:27 GMT
References: <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU< <7341@pdn.paradyne.com> <BBC.90Feb7154213@sicilia.rice.edu>
Reply-To: ken@mm.UUCP (Ken Seefried iii)
Distribution: usa
Organization: MetaMedia, Inc., Atlanta, GA
Lines: 28

In article <BBC.90Feb7154213@sicilia.rice.edu> Benjamin Chase <bbc@rice.edu> writes:
>
>I thought the NeXT architecture, and its choice of O/S, was designed
>to eventually adapt to multiple processors (no, I don't mean the DSP,
>you boneheads, I already know about that :-).  Any opinions on this?
>Other PC and workstation class machines are slowly appearing with
>multiple processors.  Any totally unsubstantiated rumors about the
>NeXT that someone would care to spew on the net? :-)
>

How 'bout some idle speculation? 

Motorola can put at least 2, if not 4 88000s on a Eurocard (VME) format 
board (actually smaller than the NeXT NuBus card).  The 88200 CMMUs 
do all sorts of nice things like hardware cache coherency, etc.  
NuBus, similarly, was designed with cheap multiprocessing in mind.
Slide a board or two like that in the NeXT, teach Mach how to play
ball, and you've got a lot of horsepower in that cube.

'Course...thats just Ken's pipe-dream-o-the-day...



-- 
       Ken Seefried iii             ...!<anywhere>!uunet!gatech!mm!ken
         MetaMedia, Inc.              ken%mm.uucp@gatech.edu 
           Atlanta, Georgia, USA        obquote: "I feel...like a god..."