🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2017.AA2017@panchax> richard@panchax.gryphon.COM (Richard J. Sexton) writes:
>2) Math chips
>	From _EDN February 16, 1989, page 21_  Weitek has announced
>	the Abacus 3168 numeric coprocessor. When teamed with a
>	25 Mhz '030 it gives 6M Whetstones and 1.5M Flops Linpack
>	(Double Precision). It seems to be a multiply/divide square
>	root unit, only, so you would still need a 68881 for
>	transcendental functions.
Somewhat impressive, but why settle for less. The Intel 80860 (N-10) will
absolutely blow the doors off the Weitek part and just about anything else.
It is a 64 bit RISC processor with an internal FPU capable of 80 MFLOPS or
120 MOPS (millions of operations per second). Intel claims that peak 
performance could push 105K drystones, 26M whetstones, and 21 MFLOPS for
double precision LinPac. There is also builtin 3D graphics support allowing
500,000 3D transforms per second with clipping and perspective. The graphics
support also incudes Z buffer compare for hidden surface removal and pixel
interpolation allowing it to generate 21 million Gouraud shaded pixels per
second. Caching on chip is provided by separate 4K instruction and 8K data 
caches. Initial release will be in the 33MHz and 40MHz speeds but 50MHz is in
development. The parts are currently sampling for $750. I have been toying
with the idea of building an Amiga graphics board with one of these on it
but the software support required is well beyond my capabilities.
Looks like Intel has finally designed something that is worth the silicon
its on.
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|      Mark Thompson                                                     |
|      decvax!savax!thompson       Designing high performance graphics   |
|      (603)885-9583               silicon today for a better tomorrow.  |
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