From: gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block)
Subject: Re: Guesses at the new chip set (was Re: MB Interview)
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 08:19:04 GMT

daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:
(to be clear, the >> quotes are my words...)

: >>To be blunt, any bus is going to be a bottleneck.  
: 
: Well, given enough imagination and money, any interconnect will eventually
: be a bottleneck.  Fortunately, we can restrict our discussion to 
: microcomputers, which already wade ankle deep in wasted CPU cycles.  If
: you want to speed up your average PC's performance, remove all the PIO
: nonsence and put in real I/O sourced DMA like we use in the Amiga.  Once
: you have that and still generally run into speed problems, you know your
: bus is too slow.

But since we're talking about the Amiga, that's already done.  Where
is the Amiga wasting its CPU cycles?  Besides memory accesses, that
is.  That goes under the "mostly unhelp-able" category.  Unless you've
got lots of $$ for megs and megs of SRAM...

: >>Seriously, the ZorroIII architecture is set up so that it could probably be
: >>run at a much faster rate.  I don't know how the actual HARDWARE is set up,
: >>however.  
: 
: Zorro III could go much faster.  You'll run into interface delays unless 
: you're building an ideal Zorro III machine, and after that, you'll hit TTL
: practical speed limits more than likely before you run over the Zorro III
: specification, at least for best-case burst.

TTL practical speed limits would probably be around... 150 mhz?
That's pretty good...

: >>Actually, it makes Dave look good.  Everything makes Dave look good, 
: >>these days.  
: 
: What a nice thing to say.  Or are they still confusing me with Yanni?

Huh?  (not to insult anyone, but...) Who's that?

: >>Wonder why  he doesn't get yanked out from other C= by some other 
: >>business????  I wish I knew.  C'mon, Dave, tell us how much Motorola, 
: >>Intel, IBM, and Apple have been offering you.  ;)
: 
: My first guess is that all of these guys are happy with their engineers,
: and too large to notice folks like me.  Also, Intel and Motorola are out
: from the get-go; they're chip houses, I'm basically a system designer.
: I can't say I never get offers, or that Commodore pays too much, but I
: have a question for you that might help give you the answer: You like
: Zorro III, I'm proud of it.  Who else would have let me build it?  If
: Commodore can start regarding the considerable Engineering talent they
: have right now as an asset rather than a payroll, I'll probably be 
: content here for years to come.

Good question.  Who else WOULD have let you build it?  I dunno.  No
names come to mind...  But you seem rather content with the job, and
it'll be nice to see systems coming out of C= with your name on
them...  :)

I'm kind of surprised, though.  It seems that C= is the only company
whose workers are "living"...  The net presence of you and others in
the company, even if unofficial (excluding CATS), gives you an
incredibly huge image in the eye of the people I know...  I'm
surprised companies don't PAY people to be active over the nets.  It's
like a promo.  ;)

: Of course, my theory of "they're too large" can be disproven in the 
: general case.  A few weeks ago I read some article on Bill "the
: Billionare" Gates, and it mentioned that MicroSoft now makes more money
: than General Motors, and they occasionally find people they want and
: pursue them very aggressively.  But they are, of course, software.

If you'd call it that, yes.  ;)

(back to mike's words...)
: >My understanding is that the 16MHz 3000 has a 16MHz fast bus.  Put a
: >25MHz CPU in, and it still goes 16MHz on the bus... :(
: 
: Maybe.  Your 25MHz coprocessor board can source the motherboard clocks
: at 25MHz if its careful.  All A3000 chips are qualified at 25MHz.

Even the ones in the 16MHz A3000?  That's incredibly strange.  Though
intelligent.  So by dropping (dumb example coming) an 030 running at
50mhz onto a 3000's processor slot, one could feed a 25mhz clock to
the chips on a 16mhz A3000?  Would that speed ZorroIII also?

: >Dave H is not only a fantastic hardware guy, he is also a fantastic
: >software guy.  
: 
: Damn, any more praise and my head will likely explode.  I do write some

Not yet!!!!  Not till you deliver the new Amigas!!!  ;)  Of course,
it's guaranteed to happen--your name is on millions of computers,
people see that, connect it with you, and connect their feelings about
their computers with you.  I would'nt be surprised if people thought
C= had only one engineer (I think MB believes that NOW...).  ;)

: software on occasion.  I look at it kind of like exercise.  I started

Anything recently?  Last thing I knew about was FixDisk...  SetCPU, I
think, too... Not sure.

: out pretty early in electronics, by virture of the fact that my Dad 
: (now retired and functioning as a Tennis Bum) was an electrical engineer
: (of the old analog school).  He made it real easy to get into electronics,
: but along the way I picked up computers, and since programming cost
: much less than bit twiddling, I got into it as a teenager (along with
: canoeing, Judo, girls, swimming, scuba, photography, etc. -- I wasn't
: one of these one sided wiz kids).  In college, I majored in EE, but
: eventually picked up a double degree in EE and Math/CS.  So I find I
: need to write software on occasion to keep good at it.  Plus, after a
: long day in the lab, the last thing I'm going to do is go home and
: hack more hardware.  My shop here is full of sawdust, not wires...
: As Heinlein said, "specialization is for insects".

With all of the frustrations at work, you must have built a house by
now.  ;)

Greg
-- 
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