lindsay@gandalf.cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) (11/10/90)
(Actually, this is "The CPU with 3 brains", except that that thread took a left turn without changing Subject.) >> In article <42737@mips.mips.COM>, mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: >> | SPARC CPU: 30K gates } all of these reside on the >> | MIPS CPU: 30K gates } same die, a 100K gate array >> | i286 CPU: 30K gates } in BiCMOS technology It's been tried, sort of. Back in the days of CP/M, there was a machine containing several 8-bit processors - Z80, 6502, like that. It didn't sell well. Besides, who wants to design someone else's machine? You'd have to certify it, work up test suites - I suppose LSI Logic and BIT are golden here, since they both have MIPS/SPARC expertise. AMD already makes a 286: why don't they get into the RISC-chip-set market by building a 286 into one corner of a glue/peripheral chip? This would allow workstations to be PC-compatible for dead minimal cost. If the glue chip already had a memory port (say, to do DMA) then it wouldn't even take extra pins. You can't trust a 286's software: applications run privileged. So, a chip-set 286 could be superior to using a normal 286, in that AMD could build in bounds registers to keep it from running wild. -- Don D.C.Lindsay