In article <200711130121.55804.rtellason at verizon.net>,
"Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net> writes:
This sort of thing is exactly the area where I'm
fuzziest when it
comes to any sort of a real understanding of big iron. Aside from
seeing references to such stuff from time to time, I really don't
have a clue as to why you'd _want_ something like a separate dedicated
processor to handle I/O, for one example.
Its still done to this day, just that the processors are standard
parts and are embedded (every modern keyboard has a microprocessor in
it!).
The reason you do it is because its silly to have your main CPU
polling the sense lines on a keyboard to detect keystrokes.
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