bakken@hrsw2.UUCP (David E. Bakken) (05/22/88)
Is any semiconductor vendor working on a PostScript chip? I know someone came out with a Forth chip, and I seem to recall hearing something about a PostScript one but can't remember if I glan it in EE Times or National Enquirer :-}. -- Dave Bakken Boeing Commercial Airplanes (206) 277-2571 uw-beaver!apcisea!hrsw2!bakken Disclaimer: These are my own views, not those of my employers. Don't let them deter you from buying the 747 you've been saving hard for.
rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) (05/26/88)
In article <96@hrsw2.UUCP>, bakken@hrsw2.UUCP (David E. Bakken) writes: > Is any semiconductor vendor working on a PostScript chip? I know > someone came out with a Forth chip, and I seem to recall hearing > something about a PostScript one... Would a PostScript chip have enough to offer to make it worthwhile? Although PostScript has some syntactic and structural resemblances to Forth, the real work in PostScript happens in the font and graphics operations. Wouldn't it be just as good to use some very fast general- purpose processor? I think you can make a good case for something on the order of the MIPS processors in a fast printer (anything trying to achieve a true speed of, say, 25 ppm or more). One reason for asking this is the results that people seem to have found for special hardware for fast raster displays: Unless you're able to build some fancy, very fast hardware and do it very carefully, you're better off with a fast vanilla processor. (See, for example, the Pike/Locanthi paper in Software P&E about the Blit a few years ago.) Maybe somebody who knows the innards of PostScript (?Glenn?) and knows what hardware you've already got for the print engine could comment on whether you could make major gains with a special processor. -- Dick Dunn UUCP: {ncar,cbosgd,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870 ...If you get confused just listen to the music play...