🚀 go-pugleaf

>Does anyone have any up to date information about the new Intel i860
>chip as our department is thinking of investing in a parallel machine based
>around 4 such processors. We also need 16MB of fast memory on each chip so
>that they may be used separately to run our code which involves very large
>matrix manipulation......is this configuration possible now and if not when
>can we expect to see such items in the U.K.

The i860 is still in a very early sampling stage, and the only chips that
have been distributed are quite buggy.  Intel officially will only say
that they are on schedule for general sampling in the third quarter.
I've been told that first silicon on the "B" step, which is hoped to fix
the bugs, came off the line last week, and I haven't been able to find out
how it is working.

If you're looking for a system in the next 6 months or so, I wouldn't
consider the i860.  I'd expect it to be a year before systems are shipping
with reasonable software and short bug lists.

Michael Slater, Microprocessor Report    mslater@cup.portal.com
550 California Ave., Suite 320, Palo Alto, CA 94306  415/494-2677
fax: 415/494-3718