gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (10/29/88)
bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) wrote: > I wonder if a clever hacqeur could do an 8088 emulation in the DSP's > microcode assembler? People on this newsgroup just don't realize what the DSP is. It's not a general purpose processor. If it was, why would they need the 68030 at half the speed? It is a *24-bit* machine! It can address something like 8192 24-bit words! You aren't about to write an 8088 emulator for it. What it is good at is fractional fixed point adds and multiplies. ("fractional" means that the decimal, uh, binary, point is just to the LEFT of all the bits, not to the RIGHT. e.g. a value of 0xFFFFFF means "very close to 1, as in .999999" and a value of 0x800000 means 1/2.) It can do an add, a multiply, or both, in each 100ns cycle. This is great for transforming digitized samples and things. It won't run Unix. [As others have pointed out, there is already an 8088 emulator sold for 68020 systems, including Suns and Macs, called SoftPC.] -- John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com Noriega-Bush in '88 -- a *crack* team. Let's put the white powder (CIA = Cocaine Import Agency) in the white house!