🚀 go-pugleaf

kaufman@eecs.nwu.edu (Michael L. Kaufman) writes:

>In article <1992Apr3.114648.21957@bilver.uucp> wbeebe@bilver.uucp (Bill Beebe) writes:
>>...Intel should have stuck to it's original idea of selling
>>the 860 as a special support chip for the i860, ...

>What does this mean? The 860 is the i860. What are you saying, that it was 
>orginaly going to be a support chip for itself? I don't get it.

>Michael

Some time ago, before the 486 came out, I read that Intel was working on a 
chip known as the "n10". I read that it would be a coprocessor for the 486,
and be 10 times as fast as it.

Recently I have noticed adds by Microway, which was promoting a system of
their's that can include 486 motherboards and a card that uses the Intel
80860 chip. They claimed gave MFLOP numbers for it, and said that it is 10
times as fast as a 486. 

Microway is obviously pushing the use of the 860 as a high speed coprocessor,
and I heard that in another ad (Byte apr. 92) they gave a list of 860 libraries.Somewhere else on this newsgroup someone talked about developing 860
routines or using 860 routines or something like that using the MS-DOS version
of something. Looks like he is following microway's idea. (but on another
system). 

So what is going on here? when the person above said Intel should have gone
along with their original idea of the 860 being support for the i860, did
he mean i486? How much are developers supporting this idea? Are they
following Microway's and the guy who used the "MS-DOS" version for
860 work's ideas? (excuse the wordy sentence) is the 860 even the former n10?
Can we expect more 486's and applications to support an 860 coprocessor?
If so, it sounds like a pretty good idea. 

Nish Patel   nap42487@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
.