🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1993Jan20.194026.25748@westminster.ac.uk>, William Hargreaves writes:
>Why have Atari made the Falcon a 32-bit machine with only a 16-bit data bus.
>Surely, this will mean it only runs half as fast as it should.

It may seem like it only would run at half of what it could, but the
68030 is designed to perform at 100% when in async mode. That is 3 clock 
cycles for each longword access on a 32 bit bus. However, when in sync 
mode it uses 2clock cycles for each longword access on a 32 bit bus.
This means that the bus has owercapacity (i.e. the bus will be idle
every third (on an average) clock cycle. In the falcon they use sync 
mode on a 16 bit bus. This gives a 4 clock cycle for each longword
access to the bus. This implies a 25% reduction in performance, not 50%.

These days the atari and amiga people are arguing which computer have 
the fastest cpu (Falcon 030 versus A1200). The 68030 have better performance 
than a 68020 when placed in an equal arcitecture. Additionaly the A1200 runs
at 14.4 Mhz, wheras the F030 runs at 16Mhz (i realy think its 16.01xxxMhz)
giving it a extra 10% over the A1200. Summing it all up, my bet is that
this is a dead race!


Is this the fifth or fifteenth time I wrote this story?
May someone (spellcheck it and) add this too the FAQ???
-- 
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 / Joern F. Moe /  All above is my own personal opinion! \
/ Oslo, Norway /  Any lack of opinion above is also mine! \
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