multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries

arcarlini at iee.org wrote: There have been many multi-cpu consoles; the Sega Saturn had two Hitachi RISC CPUs for core processing, plus a host of other stuff for CDROM, display, sound... The PlayStation 2 is also dual-CPU. The PlayStation 3 is a Cell monster, 7 cores you can play with, although I think that's been discussed here already by Mr. Brutman. My favorite was the Atari Jaguar, which had no less than: - a 32-bit RISC GPU - a 64-bit RISC "object processor" - a 64-bit RISC blitter - a 64-bit general purpose DSP for audio and other functions - a 68000 for general-purpose helper functions And to shuffle memory around, a 64-bit DRAM controller. The Atari Jaguar *should* have been the most kick-ass console of its generation (the blitter in particular was certainly the most powerful of all the 5th-generation consoles). But it was so complex that nobody could figure out how to program it properly. Coupled with legendary Atari marketing fumbles, it died a quick death before a suitable "killer app" could be developed for it. Most coders unfamiliar with the system would treat the Jaguar as a 68000-based machine with a giant framebuffer, like an Atari ST on steroids. This was clearly not the best use of the machine. One of the more depressing examples of the system is a 3-D racing game with a completely unplayable screen update rate of about 3 frames per second. Not a typo. 3 frames per second. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/