[comp.arch] on IBM systems

yap@me.utoronto.ca (Davin Yap) (02/23/90)

sritacco@hpdmd48.HP.COM (Steve Ritacco) writes:
>If I had to
>guess what is going on, I would guess that access to the I-cache is
>very wide, 

It's 4 words wide, and they claim a transfer rate (if memory serves me :)
of some 400 Mbytes/sec.  The problem here is that you have to buy their
memory which is incredibly expensive: $6000+ CDN for 8 megabytes.

>On a side note, does IBM think workstation boxes need to be ugly to
>be impressive, or was their industrial design team out to lunch?

I fully agree here!  These things (especially the 320) are the ugliest boxes
money can buy.  Certainly this all sprang from the PS/2 line and their
want of uniformity, but $20+K workstations should be things that blend
smoothly into an aesthetic, modern office environment, they should be
shown off not hidden.  I'm all for diminutive, brown & purple
pizzaboxes (no smiley).
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