V112PDL5@UBVMSC.CC.BUFFALO.EDU (02/10/89)
Info on the FPE for the Apple IIgs.
_______________________________________ From A-link_______
FLOATING POINT PROCESSING FOR YOUR APPLE
The Byte Works is proud to announce support for the Floating Point
Engine (FPE) by Innovative Systems. This card can speed up
floating-point intensive programs by a factor of 40 to 120!
The floating point card card is based on the Motorola MC68881
floating point processor (the same processor used in the Mac II).
Support for the card is already available in the form of a special-
order version of ORCA/Pascal. Starting with version 1.3, support for
the card will be standard in ORCA/Pascal. The card is shipped with
macros that allow your current versions of ORCA/M and APW make
use of the incredible speed-ups this card can produce on floating
point calculations.
The Savage benchmark, a standard test of floating point calculations,
serves as an excellent example of what can be done with this card.
This benchmark requires 72 seconds to do a series of floating point
operations using Apple's SANE Floating Point package. With the FPE
and ORCA/Pascal, the benchmark is done in under 1 second!
The list price for Innovative Systems Floating Point Engine is
$199.95. It can be purchased from
Innovative Systems
7892 Covington Ave.
Glen BurnieD 21061cbdougla@uokmax.UUCP (Collin Broadrick Douglas) (04/14/89)
> >Is the slot 3 requirement bypassable in any way on a GS? My Transwarp is going >in slot 4 (if it ever gets here... sigh... 5 weeks and waiting) because I have >an F.P.E. (68881 Floating Point) in slot 3 (the only slot where it can live >invisibly, without changing control panel settings...). And anywhere I move it >to will cause problems by disabling something else, or requiring me to actually >physically switch cards. Ideas? Thanks. > Rich Could you give us a run-down on the F.P.E.? I've heard some about it but I haven't heard anything about how well it works. I would really appreciate any info (and I'm sure a lot of other people would too.) Thanks in advance.. Collin Douglas
NOSES@DBNINF5.BITNET (01/15/90)
A friend brorrowed me his FPE. Nice. But Innovative Systems forgot
something: A patch for the Integer Math tools to use the 68881 too. At
least the integer and long integer multiplication and division could be
speeded up. (Multiply and SDivide are used a lot in many toolsets...)
Does anybody know if iS intends to release such a setup file?
(If not -- writing one wouldn't be hard; I'll do it if I get my hands on
that card again...)
Achim
(Noses@DBNINF5.bitnet; if that won't work, try {anything}!unido!bnu!patzner)lee@TIS.COM (Theodore Lee) (02/11/90)
Could someone refresh my memory on roughly how much the Innovative System's FPE speeds up a IIGS (already with a stock Transwarp)? I know the answer differs some depending on whether you are using, say, a compiler that compiles code for it directly or whether you are simply relying on the patches to the SANE tools. Pick a reasonable computation-intensive benchmark (e.g., fractals or something equivalent.) thanks; I know I saw something along these lines recently, but can't remember where. lee@TIS.COM