19 Oct
1998
19 Oct
'98
9:58 a.m.
William Donzelli <william(a)ans.net> wrote:
As far as discrete transistor machines (2nd
generation), I would think
that a 486 would be faster in terms of both CPU and I/O horsepower.
A 486 is certainly faster in terms of CPU horsepower. But a 486
has no I/O horsepower whatsoever. Nor does any sort of Pentium.
It's certainly *possible* to add intelligent I/O channels to an x86 machine.
And there have been attempts at it. But I2O notwithstanding, the closest that
you'll find in real x86 systems is bus-mastering IDE, SCSI, and Ethernet
controllers.