Re: Total Chaos

Thread View: comp.sys.mac.oop.macapp3

1 messages

[T] Back to Threads [V] Tree View [G] Group Articles

1 total messages Started by JWBAXTER Mon, 11 Jan 1993 08:11

#263

Author: JWBAXTER
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 08:11

29 lines
1670 bytes

From: jwbaxter@halcyon.halcyon.com
To: MACAPP3TECH$@applelink.apple.com

John,
   Emulation isn't necessarily going to produce slow running of Mac OS
applications on the new hardware.  I've seen instances in the past in which
such emulations on new hardware ran faster than the old machines did (NCR
315 emulated on the Criterion, as one example).  In this case, we have a
situation where a typical Mac OS application spends considerable time in
the toolbox routines.  The key ones of those can be (and, it is said, will
be) recoded in native code, giving a boost.

   On top of that, the 68000 is an emulator, anyhow.  The visible
instruction set is emulated by the microcode.  Shortly after the chip came
out, both NCR and IBM took a long look at re-microcoding it to run their
mainframe instruction sets (Criterion and 370).  Both concluded that there
wasn't quite enough silicon available (there was another problem...the
microcode was a one-man show, he was gone, and the "source" was only
slightly more organized than Woz's notes on the Apple ][ ROM).

   I don't know whether the 68020, 30, and 40 are also microcoded, or not.

   We won't know whether Mac OS running on the new machines is bad or not
until we see it.

--------------
John W. Baxter   jwbaxter@halcyon.com   [BAXTER.JOHN on AppleLink, from
AppleLink only.]

Thread Navigation

This is a paginated view of messages in the thread with full content displayed inline.

Messages are displayed in chronological order, with the original post highlighted in green.

Use pagination controls to navigate through all messages in large threads.

Back to All Threads