info-vax (03/22/83)
>From GEOFF5@SRI-CSL Mon Mar 21 16:55:50 1983
Received: by UCBVAX.ARPA (3.331/3.17)
id AA01154; 21 Mar 83 16:56:59 PST (Mon)
To: AWalker@RUTGERS
Cc: INFO-VAX@MIT-MC
In-Reply-To: Msg of 8 Mar 1983 1658-EST from Hobbit <AWalker at RUTGERS>
Remailed-Date: 20 Mar 1983 2309-PST
Remailed-From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow <Geoff5 at SRI-CSL>
Remailed-To: Info-VAX@SRI-CSL.ARPA: ;
I would be very much suprised if the 730 was an economical or
reasonable PDP-11. That isn't what they want to sell it as. The 730
doesn't have much hardware that would speed anything up. According to
people inside DEC we lisp hackers here talk to, the significant
investment in the 730 is the microcode developement tools. The
microengine itself is standard bitslice technology frob that anybody out of
6.032 (MIT course number) could build. The thing loads its microcode
everytime it boots.
It doesn't take any leap of faith to figure that what DEC is in a
position of doing is selling extra MicroCode to people with particular
applications. Some companies already hack loadable microcode into the PDP-11
series for special purposes: signal processing, character recognition,
typesetting, areas in which there are big bucks; where one has the
possibility of being competitive with more slickly produced general
purpose hardware. (e.g. from IBM)
However, the PDP-11 is pretty much dead-end for these applications, for
obvious reasons. The 730, and faster such microengines, would not be.
Here is the question of the day:
Q: What BUSS do you think the 730 processor fits into?
Anyway, be careful with munging system generation parameters, keep
careful records to fall back on when you wedge the machine. I doubt
this will help PDP-11 emulation mode though. Do everything you can to
decrease disk I/O activity, buy more memory and increase buffer sizes.
Have people switch to EDT, or Emacs. An editor which keeps the text
in-the-address-space will improve the disk I/O situation, which is critical
on a 730.
-gjc