kenb@amc-gw.amc.com (Ken Birdwell) (10/24/90)
I've heard that:
"Its currently not possible for outsiders to write software for the i860".
What! Why? Thats really stupid! The i860 is the only reason Im interested
in the NeXT. Ive been pricing i860 boards for the IBM PC world and the
cheapest I can find is $5k for a 1Meg board with no software. Most start
around $8k and dont even have their own video output, you have to go over the
stupid PC bus to display anything (Gads, really sloooooowwww). When I saw
that NeXT was selling a i860 board for $4k with 8Meg and video output I thought
"Boy, dump this stupid 286 and get a NeXT."
Now I hear that it'll be useless to me. I just got done talking with some guy
at NeXT and he said that they dicided they were not going to give access to
the i860 directly. Why, whats the reason? I couldnt care less about
PostScript, I need floating point speed. Currently I write image rendering
software in assembly on a AT&T DSP32C. I run it under XENIX on a 286 and have
written device drivers so it's fairly painless. I know that I can get a
board for my 286 that'll do 25MFLOP's and can be hooked up to a display for
around $2k. Still, I need more MFLOP's and I would like for my code to run
on something other than a obscure board. Ive been looking at i860 boards
and have been quite nervous about getting one because of lack of support for
it if the company I buy it from happens to fail. I figured that even if
NeXT dies in the next few years I would be much better off with a obsolete
piece of equipment from them then from some no-name company.
Anyway, why doesn't NeXT want to allow access to those 80MFLOP's? (Well, I
know I can get at least 15-40 from it). From everything Ive read the NeXT
Dimension board is by far the best on the market. Realtime video capture
and compression, 24bit color, 40MHZ i860.. what more could you ask for. Now
I find out they wont let me use it :^( Life's not fair.
-- izumi@fugitive.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa) (10/24/90)
In article <3706@amc-gw.amc.com> kenb@d9.amc.com (Ken Birdwell) writes: >I've heard that: > "Its currently not possible for outsiders to write software for the i860". >Now I hear that it'll be useless to me. I just got done >talking with some guy >at NeXT and he said that they dicided they were >not going to give access to >the i860 directly. Why, whats the reason? I couldnt care less about >PostScript, I need floating point speed. Currently I write image rendering I do care about Display PostScript, but I agree with you. I am very much interested in this, as I am contemplating doing similar things. I suspect the reason is that they want ALL software to be compatible with all of their models. And this requires that you go through the DPS and the WindowServer. Perheps, NeXT thinks that it's better not to have Ken's software at all, it it breaks rules. This is a STUPID policy. There are things which are just plain impossible unless you have direct access to i860 and other hardware on board. I suspect that Ken's application is just such a project, and his software won't probably be sold as a install and run product. When/if he ships products he will probably ship them as a total system including the cube. I am thinking of projects that will probably require going directly to hardware. I need high speed graphics generation capability in a university lab settings. I just need to build ONE system which will allow me to do research for the next several years. NeXTdimension is a tremendously capable board for its price. I wouldn't be surprised if any of the companies involved in industrial computer vision systems wanted to use NeXTdimension as the heart of their system. Why totally rule out such uses of NeXTdimensions. Why shut the door to people who want to use a cube with NeXTdimension in an embedded system? This is potentially a very large market too. It may not be totally unreasonable if NeXT requires a non-disclosure agreement of some sort for the details of hardware design. I would be happy to sign one. If NeXT refused to let us do these things even if we are willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, that is really bad. Ken, I don't know what your positions are for signing such an agreement, but I would be curious to know if they would still refuse even with the intention of signing a non-disclosure. If you are about tell me the benefits of DPS, don't bother. I am already a convert. I truely believe in DPS, and know its benefits. But some of the things I want to do can't be done if I went through DPS. You see, you can put up to 3 NeXTdimensions into a cube. Not all of them have to run DPS. I might run DPS on the first but let me do whatever I want to do with the remaining two, please. Izumi Ohzawa, izumi@violet.berkeley.edu
osmoviita@cc.helsinki.fi (10/26/90)
In article <3706@amc-gw.amc.com>, kenb@amc-gw.amc.com (Ken Birdwell) writes: > I've heard that: > "Its currently not possible for outsiders to write software for the i860". .. > What! Why? Thats really stupid! The i860 is the only reason Im interested > in the NeXT. ... .. > Anyway, why doesn't NeXT want to allow access to those 80MFLOP's? (Well, I > know I can get at least 15-40 from it). From everything Ive read the NeXT > Dimension board is by far the best on the market. Realtime video capture > and compression, 24bit color, 40MHZ i860.. what more could you ask for. Now > I find out they wont let me use it :^( Life's not fair. Same thoughts! I would like to put three (or more) NeXT Dimension boards in one machine and have three monitors, each with separate images. And have easy acces by having a parallelizing and vectorizing C-compiler to put each board handle different data efficiently.