mslater@cup.portal.com (Michael Z Slater) (08/31/89)
There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not the i860 was really designed as a coprocessor. This has caused a lot of confusion among those who think of a coprocessor as something like a 387, which operates from the same instruction stream as the 386 and cannot operate standalone. If THAT is what a coprocessor is, then the i860 certainly is not one. However, the term coprocessor is often used to mean any processor other than the main processor, regardless of how it gets its instructions or how it interfaces to the main processor. In my opinion, something should only be called a coprocessor if it fetches instructions from the same stream as another processor, transparently extends the instruction set of that processor, and cannot operate as a stand-alone processor. This brings up two questions: