🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr16.180415.26582@cs.ucla.edu> esky@mayhem.icsl.ucla.edu writes:
>
>Why not NeXT? I mean, Ariel has come out with PC boards using the 96001  
>"Multimedia" DSP chip from Motorola.
>
[munch]  
>
>a 33-MHz 96002 processes 16.5 MIPS and 49 MFLOPS.  The dual 88110 CPUs being  
>rumored lately beat this chip in the MIPS, but do they have the MFLOPS?  I  
>think it would be a good idea to use it in both 040 and (if ever) 88110  
>systems.
>
>What do you think?
>
>Eskandar Ensafi --- esky@marathon.cs.ucla.edu, esky@mayhem.icsl.ucla.edu

The problem I have with this is integrating a completely foreign
CPU with the rest of the system.

Currently, the NeXT requires special DSP memory and a special DSP
bus to bridge between the native CPU and the DSP.  It seems to me
that this stuff is very special purpose and totally nonflexible.

The software required to access the DSP is also very special
purpose and not very flexbile.  Currently, the DSP can be only
used for batch jobs.  It's a problem when I want to run Mandelbrot.app
and listen to a .score file.  This does not seem like the way to do things
in a multitasking environment.

It costs money to design and implement these special purpose solutions.

I speculate that special purpose onboard processors like the DSP
will give way to fast and inexpensive general purpose processors.
The DSP is an intermediate stage until we get a general purpose
CPU that can do everything.

Special purpose processors have their place doing dedicated things.

...Stuart