[comp.arch] Delivering Power

lindsay@gandalf.cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) (12/09/90)

In article <1990Dec07.194407.29083@digibd.com> 
	rhealey@digibd.com (Rob Healey) writes:
>	Not to burst any bubbles but, my toaster oven and thermostat
>	don't need 28MIPS of CPU power to function. Hell, I'll even
>	throw in my microwave, 'fridge, VCR, Stereo, TV and dishwasher!

I found this particularly apt, since I had in my hand a brochure on
the ITT DataWave chip. This is intended to go into consumer HDTV
sets, will cost $30-$40, and it does 4000 MOPS. A quick rummage came
up with the C-Cube CL550 JPEG Image Compression Processor, which will
do 9400 MOPS. (And it only does NTSC TV in real time - HDTV requires
four CL550's in parallel.)

Why so white hot? The C-Cube brochure starts the mind-numbing process
by multiplying 24 bits/pixel * 477 kPixels/frame (== NTSC) * 30
frames/second. The ITT brochure starts the mind-numbing process by
multiplying 100 M samples/second * 100 operations/sample.

I have more compute power in my wristwatch than Eniac had. In a
decade, the average household may have a million times more.

-- 
Don		D.C.Lindsay .. temporarily at Carnegie Mellon

sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) (12/15/90)

In article <11334@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, lindsay@gandalf.cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) writes:

>I found this particularly apt, since I had in my hand a brochure on
>the ITT DataWave chip. This is intended to go into consumer HDTV
>sets, will cost $30-$40, and it does 4000 MOPS. A quick rummage came
>up with the C-Cube CL550 JPEG Image Compression Processor, which will
>do 9400 MOPS. (And it only does NTSC TV in real time - HDTV requires
>four CL550's in parallel.)
......
>
>I have more compute power in my wristwatch than Eniac had. In a
>decade, the average household may have a million times more.

Humm, so you could network a couple of TVs and a digital audio sound system,
instead of purchasing a real parallel processing computer? Hummmm. Use the
toaster to handle disk I/O, and the blender to handle print queues and you have
a hot backup site for work....but I don't think any of them will have SCSI
ports...
                          %%%%% Signature v2.0 %%%%%
 Doug Mohney, Operations Manager, CAD Lab/ME, Univ. of Maryland College Park
*   If Apple's pricing strategy had been as exciting as their commercials, *
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