doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (03/06/85)
> Regarding how much memory is enough, consider a cpu sharing > ram with a video coprocessor. Let each video frame consist of > 1000x1000 pixels with 3 color planes for each pixel. Each color > plane consists of 1 byte. This gives you 3 Mb per frame! At this > rate, you can use memory pretty fast. I think such resolution is > a realistic expectation in the near future (10 years). Whether > any existing integrated processor can update the frames fast > enough for useful video is another question. Not "another" question. "THE" question. Nobody designing such a system is going to choose a 32000 or 68000 to drive it, because it would be so *slowwwww* as to be laughable. Which illustrates the central point here: The "large memory" applications are totally different from "single-chip CPU" applications, so why on earth should the single-chip CPUs have to support such huge memories? Now some minor points... 1) I don't see how a video memory that takes 3 Mbytes shows that CPUs that address "only" 16 Mbytes would be inadequate. 2) It seems to me that when your application shows up in 10 years that the 32000 and 68000 will be as obsolete as the 8008 is today, so there's no point in worrying about whether they'd be able to do the job. -- Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug