[rescue] Apple WWDC Summary, Cube Computers

[Eric Josephson]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 01:42:16PM -0700, Skeezics Boondoggle wrote:
> > Actually, there were a surprising number of NeXTbus options, given the
> > small market and low volume; some of them were highly impressive!  I don't
> > have the old catalog at hand here in the office, but there were boards
> > with 5 DSPs on 'em, boards with dual i[89]60s on 'em, even saw mention of
> > some custom ATM cards that one of the big NeXT customers had developed for
> > interfacing with a management software app they were developing - McCaw
> > Cellular?  No?  M-something, tho.  Damn I need a memory upgrade. :-)
>
> DSP cards are cool, but they are probably a bit hard to make use of on
> most platforms at this point.  I'm particularly disappointed by the lack
> of continuing support for the AT&T chips used so much in Macs and Mac
> accelerators.
>

How so, "hard to make use of"?  I'm no dsp expert, but I'd think
the real utility would be the ability to offload realtime dsp
tasks from an OS that provides no realtime support.  Sure, with
today's hardware you may have enough left over to make it work
'good enough' (think winmodem) but to me it doesn't seem like
as reliable an approach as a separate dsp with a realtime kernel.

By 'AT&T chips' are you referring to the DSP3210 series?  Other than
the Quadra AVs, what other Mac products were they used in?  I had
a bear of a time finding datasheets on those, and still haven't
found anything on the RTOS beyond what's in the AV developers'
guide.

It is too bad Apple didn't continue to make systems with those
on board, as it would've been nice to have a standard dsp in
the Mac hardware.  The problem I see is that you don't get
apps that use it unless developers can depend on it being
present.  Compare the number of nifty dsp apps for the
NeXT black hardware vs. almost nothing for the Quadra AVs.