🚀 go-pugleaf

In <74042@cup.portal.com> Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes:

>Only if the process (DSPs don't multitask, it would be pointless
>on a chip designed for highspeed manipulation of data streams)
>was something useful.  If it was doing something like processing
>video data while the main CPU ran something else, it could
>be called parallel processing, but you couldn't do anything like
>running two general purpose programs in parallel.

	Actually, I think this is what is generally refered to as parallel
processing, though as the dsp is a different chip for the main
processor, I would guess it's more accurately co-processing. With true
parallel processing computers, like the ill-fated ATW, the main use is
for pipelined operations, where one processor can have an operation
running with the output data fed to another processor. 
	The dsp will hopefully be used for all kinds of interesting
applicatioons, but the limited instruction set seems to rule out things
like compilers, word processors, and other common operations. Possibly
it might be useful for recalculating large spreadsheets, though most
spreadsheets tend to involve floating point math. I haven't done a lot
of floating point to scaled integer conversion, so I don't know if the
dsp would be useful for speeding it up or if the overhead of converting
would outweight the speed up from using the dsp.
	3D virtual reality software could benifit enormously from the dsp,
but if the machine slows down as much as is reported in the true-colour
mode, then the limited resolution of the lower rez modes would make the
Falcon more of a hobbiest level machine for that. That fits in well with
it's target market, but I wouldn't expect to see Terminator IV graphics
done on it. 

-- 
		 John Henders
		 Vancouver,BC