as@castle.ed.ac.uk (A Stevens) (12/28/90)
From: A Stevens <as>
Subject: Re: ARM4
To: kvj@rhi.hi.is (Kristjan Valur Jonsson)
In-Reply-To: Kristjan Valur Jonsson's message of 27 Dec 90 15:11:32 GMT
Cc:
In reply to Kristjan's query as to what ways an ARM-3 might be
improved upon...
(1) (The biggy for me) A *MUCH* Bigger, *MUCH* Smarter (i.e. multi-way
set-associative, ...) cache. This would be a huge win on the kind
of single-user, low memory band-width machines we all know and love...
e.g. My A440 in a 256 colour screen mode.
The current cache is a wee bit too small and dumb to really bite
in situations like running TeX and the like.
(2) A good FPU - this would make the ARM much more competitive running
UNIX and make those ray-tracing demos sooo much faster!
(3) Tweaks to allow data, if not program, addresses to go beyond the current
32M or whatever.
(4) Hardware integer mul and div.
Andrew