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To: Lee who wrote (37127)	4/8/1998 2:56:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

OT OT Lee - I spent many years doing process control, designed a lot of multiprocessor systems in the 70's and 80's. It's demanding work and people who can succeed in realtime process control can pretty much do anything in the computer business. The reason multiprocessors have not gotten much traction is probably Gordon Bell's rule # 29, general purpose MIPS will always be cheaper than special purpose MIPS in a general purpose market. Every attempt to bring out special devices (some examples which come to mind are special LAN adapters and other IO subsystems) have broken when either the capability gets absorbed into the operating system, or the general purpose components get fast enough that no one will pay the premium for the special purpose stuff. But there are some notable exceptions, which are now part of the 'industry standard' including a lot of the Intel I2O initiative. USB and 1394 peripheral standards are also steps in this direction.

To: Lee who wrote (37127)	4/8/1998 10:24:00 PM
From: K. M. Strickler	Respond to of 176387

L, Actually, there are other processors out there, but in many cases the processes are disguised as ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits). A notable example is the IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) hard disk controller that you are probably using in your computer. It is the responsibility of that card to make whatever the number of platters and heads that you physical drive has, look like a standard head, platter count. By doing this, the operating system is relieved from trying to remember all of the drives that are out there. (It still has a bunch of drive types to remember!) Many of the display cards have ASIC's to handle the display functions. It is interesting to note that the AMIGA computer had three processors, one for I/O, one for Display, and then the CPU. That is why the AMIGA was such a wonderful video processor. Some of the new computers have from 2 to 4 Processors, so it is definitely on the way! It is easier to talk about them, then build them! Remember, Nothing is too tough for the person that doesn't have to do it! Regards, Ken