Everything on one chip??
The problem with this idea is that
you have to get everything off of
the chip to see the results, and it
is difficult to get that many pins
on a chip. What is necessary is multi
processing, and perhipherals that do
things by themselvs. Right now on
PC the CPU does most of the work. On
worstations the CPU just runs the code,
and the perhipherals do the work. The
hard drive controller can read from the
disk and write the data to memory without
the help of the CPU. The CPU just has
to tell it to do that. Also this process
doesn't interfere with the processing of
the CPU. The pc has problems because the
CPU has to sit and wait, doing nothing,
until the data is read from the hard
drive to the memory. Then the CPU can
start to process that data. On a workstation
there will be several programs running,
and those programs can be mutlithreaded.
(Multithreaded. One program difided into
"sub-programs" that can run in parralell
working together to acomplish one task.)
Well the program or thread that is asking
for the data from the hard drive will have
to wait as it depends on that data, but the
other programs or threads can keep going.
Thus they are keeping the CPU bussy so it
is not just waiting for the data. The same
thing with the graphics. Windows acellerators
are doing some of this, but not enough. On
the SGI machine that I am using now, there
are 16 processors running in the graphics
hardware just to fill polygons and move video
memory around in its respective part of the
screen, as the screen is divided up in a
grid. This makes the graphics way faster than
any PC that you can buy at any price, and this
performance doesn't ever use the CPU, as I have
a CPU in here that has the performanc about equal
to a 200MHz P-Pro. This is the way machines should
be designed, and soon PC's will be designed this
way because they will have to be inorder to get
the performance. This will mean more work for
creative labs. The sound processor is the same
way. The CPU shouldn't have to do that. It is only
supposed to be the coordinator of the task, to
the workhorse. That job is for the perhipherals.
This idea about putting everything on one chip is
only to reduce costs, as it costs more to make
a M/B than it costs to make a chip. If you can
reduce the # of chips on the M/B, the you reduce
the cost of the M/B, and thus the cost of the
system. There is a huge market out there for
low cost systems, and someone will make lots of
money on it.
Terje |
