23 May
2001
23 May
'01
4:11 p.m.
On May 23, Jim Battle wrote:
Yeahh...the '860 is one hell of a number cruncher.
Another place to find '860 chips is in SGI hardware. The
RealityEngine video system uses eight i860s, and the RealityEngine^2
uses twelve of them. In each case they're used for geometric
transforms.
Yes. Was slow
too ;-)
Hey, now. I've actually used an i860. A 3D graphics terminal I worked on
in 91-93 used two: one for the control processor, one for the geometry unit I agree, intel has one butt-ugly architecture with the
x86, but nobody in
their right minds can fault them for succeeding despite that. Given the
fact that they must live with the ugliness, their implementations are first
rate.
...and what blows my mind is the fact that, of all of their
architectures, the one most unbelievably disgusting one is the one
they keep selling buttloads of.
-Dave McGuire