SAMcinty@exua.exeter.ac.uk (Scott McIntyre) (06/17/91)
According to the June Issue of BYTE, a German company by the name of I think Rehm has created a widget called the Icecap...essentially, it forces the processor to run faster by cooling it down. It has amazing speed increases, such as a 50Mhz 486 up to 96Mhz and 225Mhz landmark, whatever that means. They also mentioned that versions for 68030 and SPARCs are in the works... Would one of these devices work on a station? Would it be silly to consider? Anyone have any idea what it is actually doing? Scott
jiro@shaman.com (Jiro Nakamura) (06/18/91)
In article <1386@exua.exeter.ac.uk> SAMcinty@exua.exeter.ac.uk (Scott McIntyre) writes: > > According to the June Issue of BYTE, a German company by the name of > I think Rehm has created a widget called the Icecap...essentially, it > forces the processor to run faster by cooling it down. It has amazing > speed increases, such as a 50Mhz 486 up to 96Mhz and 225Mhz landmark, > whatever that means. They also mentioned that versions for 68030 and > SPARCs are in the works... > > Would one of these devices work on a station? Would it be silly to > consider? Anyone have any idea what it is actually doing? I think that this involves a whole system upgrade. You put the Icecap (or other cooling device) on your CPU, then crank up the system clock so that it runs faster. But you also have to work out whats going to happen to your nice bus and also to your nice other devices that depend on having certain clock speeds (such as RAM). IMHO, this is a kludge. It's like boring out your car's engine, sure it will make it run faster, but it wasn't designed to do it, so you might lose longetivity/reliability in the long run. - jiro nakamura jiro@shaman.com -- Jiro Nakamura jiro@shaman.com Shaman Consulting (607) 256-5125 VOICE "Bring your dead, dying shamans here!" (607) 277-1440 FAX/Data
brian@umbc4.umbc.edu (Brian Cuthie) (06/19/91)
In article <1386@exua.exeter.ac.uk> SAMcinty@exua.exeter.ac.uk (Scott McIntyre) writes: > >According to the June Issue of BYTE, a German company by the name of >I think Rehm has created a widget called the Icecap...essentially, it >forces the processor to run faster by cooling it down. It has amazing >speed increases, such as a 50Mhz 486 up to 96Mhz and 225Mhz landmark, >whatever that means. They also mentioned that versions for 68030 and >SPARCs are in the works... > >Would one of these devices work on a station? Would it be silly to >consider? Anyone have any idea what it is actually doing? > >Scott Actually, this is a device which *allows* a slower processor to be run at a higher speed. It's mere presence isn't enough to speed up your machine. Additionally, the rest of the machine's architecture must support the increased speed. It's not clear whether the NeXTstation is processor bound, or if it is actually made to only go at 25 Mhz. In any case, you would need to change the clock, which, of course, is used for other system timings as well, so everything would break. Basically: this is a device for systems designers. It is not really intended for use as a retrofit. -brian