🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4ohrmu$lk0@mdnews.btv.ibm.com>, pontius@twonky.btv.ibm.com says...
>
>In article <4ohjbc$qt4@cisu2.jsc.nasa.gov>,
>        wally@nirvana.jsc.nasa.gov (Walter B Kulecz PhD) writes:
>>
>>Anyone who runs real calculations (fft's, matrix algebra, etc) doesn't 
>>consider
>>a machine without FP hardware (this has been true since the XT), so people
>>serious about multimedia won't consider machine without MMX asuming the
>>hardware actually delivers the improvements promised.  I expect it will.
>>
>I might tend to differ here. People who are really serious about
>multimedia will have dedicated boards, which give overall better
>system performance. MMX is really for people who are 'moderately
>serious' - in other words: cheapskates, or normal folks. MMX will
>give a good boost over non-MMX for multimedia and games, but it
>taxes the CPU heavily to do so. A dedicated board does the same
>thing, but leaves to CPU free to do other things. (What other
>things... perhaps the MM board is playing MPEGs while the CPU is
>working on motion, collision detection, and user interface logic.

While this is possible, I doubt it will happen this way *because* of the 
software issue the original poster was concerned with.  Continuing my analogy 
with foating point hardware, there were "faster" dedicated "math chips" but 
they had little lasting impact.  Remember the Weitek socket on many 386 
motherboards?  Seems it got more hardware support from motherboard vendors than 
it ever did from software developers.

Unless the multimedia accelerator board vendors can come up with a standard and 
stable API quickly they will be niche products tied to a small set of games or 
high-end applications.

Really serious FP users don't consider PCs but get workstations which deliver 
2X+ the performance of fast pentiums at 4X+ the cost.  For most of us there is 
a cost ceiling which means we have to live with a slower but more cost 
effective solution.  I assume all those *really serious* about multimedia have 
Silicon Graphics machines  :-)

--wally.