🚀 go-pugleaf

> Second, One of the hallmarks of a true-blue RISC chip, however, is
> *LOTS* of registers.  The Am29000, for instance, has 192.  Only large
> structs and arrays need to go off-chip.

Is this per-context, or are they shared between all the running processes?
After all, the transputer is not a single-process machine!

> Thus, the assumption that *everything* is in a register is perfectly
> valid, even in situations where other architectures would go off-chip.

As I understand it, RISC machines have difficulties once the number
of runnable processes gets above the number of "hardware" contexts
available to it.  I think that if you have a task that fires off 30
processes, the transputer will blow the doors off anything else,
because its switching overhead is 10% of most other machines.
What is the switch time of the Am29000?

Dave Pare