[rescue] Sun 711

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 2 May 2002, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On May 2, Chris Byrne wrote:
> > Actually Intel makes a processor well suited for high bandwidth I/O. It's
> > called the i860 and is used in quite a few controllers ;-)
>
>   Ahh, one of their last *good* processor designs.

The i860 is an interesting design.  From a VLSI perspective, I think it's
kind of neat.  From an embedded perspective using handcoded assembler,
it had amazing bang for the buck.  Unmatched in its day for crunching
graphics.

>From an application programmer/compiler writers perspective, I think it's
a flaming pile of dung.  There was tremendous performance locked under the
surface, but extracting it on a regular basis required deep magic.

-James