sjs@jcricket.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer) (10/14/88)
In article <1988Oct13.165717.10262@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > In article <2567@sultra.UUCP> dtynan@sultra.UUCP (Der Tynan) writes: > >With all this talk of a Sun RAS/CAS pseudo-patent, my curiosity is piqued. > >Would someone care to give a description of the patent? ... > > The basic notion is, since the RAMs want the address in two parts, one at > a time, if you choose things like page size carefully, you can hand the > RAMs the untranslated low-order bits first, and run the high-order bits > through the MMU while the RAMs are contemplating the low-order bits. Which is pretty much what I thought too, but I recall reading about this very scheme in the 3B20 special issue of the BSTJ back in (I think) 1983. Does AT&T pay Sun licensing fees for this (presumably unobvious) innovation? Or perhaps there is more to it. What gives? Stan Switzer "Thou shalt not have no idea." sjs@ctt.bellcore.com