[sdiy] Slightly OT : Intel i960

[Richard Wentk]

At 23:43 25/12/2002 +0100, Magnus Danielson wrote:

>The AMD 2900 is cool, but slow.

Nostalgia time - a 2900 bit slice audio processor was my final year 
university project...

>If you want a challenge, build a computer based on 74S181's or some
>faster variant. You could get the ECL variants 10181 or 100181 or maybe
>even lay your hands on the GaAs variants if you can... ;O)

With all of these, and the i8/960, the question is 'why?' - unless you want 
to do it as an exercise. In terms of raw megaflops, an Athlon or P4 *is* a 
supercomputer. In fact for applications that keep as cache-happy as 
possible, these modern machines are roughly equivalent to a Cray Y-MP.

As a rule of thumb there's approx a ten year lag between supercomputer and 
desktop power. So expect a petaflop audio supercomp around 2015.

Incidentally the clock in my Athlon now runs faster than the 1900MHz 
klystron in my microwave. :)

Richard