[rescue] Re: Wanted - Dual (or quad) PPro

[Jochen Kunz]

On 2003.02.20 17:44 Scott Newell wrote:

> Not sure if they were new or not: but how 'bout micro-ops and dual die
> in a single package?
Micro-ops is a "medicine" to cure the limitations of the CISC
instruction set architecture that is hard to implement with "modern"
RISC style CPU designs. It is a hack. The proper solution to the problem
would have been to drop the entire x86 architecture and replace it with
a RISC architecture. But ...
Dual die package? Well. The SGI Extreme / XZ graphics board, introduced
in 1993, uses a single ceramic package for four geometry engine
processors. I think the POWER CPU in a IBM RS/6000 590 is a multi die
package too.
There was an other "new" thing that the PPro introduced: The GTL+ CPU
bus for connecting multiple CPUs together. The basic idea of a CPU bus
like that is older, see Sun MBus.
--



tsch|_,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/