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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!gatech!gitpyr!rodney
From: rod...@gitpyr.UUCP (RODNEY RICKS)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Sep-86 20:30:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.2270
Posted: Sat Sep 20 20:30:27 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Sep-86 22:30:05 EDT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.
Lines: 26
Keywords: new motorola chips mmu fast
In the September 18, 1986 issue of Electronic Design magazine, there is an
article on page 27 describing the new microprocessor from Motorola, the 68030.
The chip is said to run software 20% to 30% faster than the 68020. The chip
is supposed to be available in mid-1987, along with an improved math
coprocessor, the 68882, which will be up to 25% faster than the 68881.
Oh yeah, by the way, the chip will have a built-in, paged memory-management
unit (in case anybody cares :-)). The MMU is a subset of the 68551 PMMU.
The chips have several other interesting features, which I will leave to the
article, so that I won't be accused of plagaurism (sp?).
The bus data transfer rate of the 68030 is 40 Mbytes/sec.
Hopefully, now we won't have to put up with the Intel fans (short
for fanatics? :-)) telling us that Intel has the best microprocessor.
Now, when will I be able to connect one to my Amiga?
Rodney Ricks,
(Not officially respresenting...) The 64 Store. Atlanta, Georgia 30339
UUCP: ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!rodney
or : !gatech!gt-oscar!rodney
Mail: 4265 Hidden Valley Dr. College Park, Ga. 30349
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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!lll-lcc!pyramid!decwrl!sun!cmcmanis
From: cmcma...@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <7637@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 25-Sep-86 14:42:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.7637
Posted: Thu Sep 25 14:42:09 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Sep-86 20:14:58 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 11
> In the September 18, 1986 issue of Electronic Design magazine, there is an
> article on page 27 describing the new microprocessor from Motorola, the 68030.
... edited out ...
Ah yes another volley in the "Well this stuff is OK but look at what we will
have next year!" contest. Anyone for starting a "Best Announced but not
yet available product" award?
--
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcma...@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!qantel!ptsfa!well!swalton
From: swal...@well.UUCP (Stephen R. Walton)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <1837@well.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Sep-86 00:30:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: well.1837
Posted: Fri Sep 26 00:30:06 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 02:43:56 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP>
Reply-To: swal...@well.UUCP (Stephen R. Walton)
Distribution: net
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
Lines: 31
Keywords: new motorola chips mmu fast
Summary: It ain't goin' in PC's
In article <2...@gitpyr.UUCP> rod...@gitpyr.UUCP (RODNEY RICKS) writes:
>In the September 18, 1986 issue of Electronic Design magazine, there is an
>article on page 27 describing the new microprocessor from Motorola, the 68030.
>The chip is said to run software 20% to 30% faster than the 68020. The chip
>is supposed to be available in mid-1987, along with an improved math
>coprocessor, the 68882, which will be up to 25% faster than the 68881.
>
I hope the '82 is more like twice as fast as the 68881.
>The bus data transfer rate of the 68030 is 40 Mbytes/sec.
Think about this. That's a memory access time of 25 nanoseconds, more than
4 times as fast as the memory we use in our PC's, Macs, Amigas, and Apples.
>Now, when will I be able to connect one to my Amiga?
Probably soon. But it won't be noticably faster than a CSA 68020.
An editorial on the subject of the 68040 (yes, 40) in a recent issue of
a small PC magazine commented that these chips are so fast that a fair
amount of high-speed cache memory is absolutely essential to take full
advantage of them. And that means minicomputer pricing, not micros.
Unless one of you hot-shot chip designers out there can put together a
1 MB DRAM with 25 ns access which will sell for less than $100 apiece :->
Stephen Walton, speaking for myself
Dudley Moore: You must be a nut case!
Peter Cook: They said that about Galileo! They said that about Einstein!
Moore: Yeah, well they've said it about a lot of nut cases, too.
-from the movie "Bedazzled"
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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rick
From: r...@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <41786@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV>
Date: Fri, 26-Sep-86 12:39:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: beno.41786
Posted: Fri Sep 26 12:39:28 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Sep-86 20:49:43 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp>
Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
Lines: 33
Summary: sun is no better
In article <7...@sun.uucp>, cmcma...@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) writes:
> Ah yes another volley in the "Well this stuff is OK but look at what we will
> have next year!" contest. Anyone for starting a "Best Announced but not
> yet available product" award?
Well, we ordered the several Floating Point Accelerators from Sun
back in August 1985 (as soon as they were announced). We still haven't
seen them, nor heard a ship date.
I've heard that they were shipping 5 or 6 times now.
We have seen great benchmark results from Sun though....
I vote for the sun FPA, it looks great on paper. (The GKS product is
also unobtainable, despite being in the catalog for about a year. However,
it is no where near as impressive as the FPA.)
I talked to someone who actually had his hands on one, so they may
be really shipping them now. He may have had a beta test version though.
I wouldn't call them available until you can actually get one without
waiting a year. (Hmm. A year is about what you are complaining about with
Motorola)
---rick
P.S Aside from the FPA and GKS vaporware, we are happy Sun customers.
(Although I wish they would quit gratuitiously changing the way programs
worked. My latest example is that repquota no longer prints disk usage
for people without quotas UNLESS you specify a flag. It would have been
backwards compatible to have a flag to supress printing disk usage
for people with no quotas. Oh well, it only took me an hour to
figure out way the quota system "wasn't working" anymore. I hate surprises.)
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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!cbosgd!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon
From: dil...@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <8609262336.AA01693@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 26-Sep-86 19:36:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: cory.8609262336.AA01693
Posted: Fri Sep 26 19:36:36 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 03:50:17 EDT
Sender: dae...@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 18
>From: swal...@well.UUCP (Stephen R. Walton)
>>The bus data transfer rate of the 68030 is 40 Mbytes/sec.
>
>Think about this. That's a memory access time of 25 nanoseconds, more than
>4 times as fast as the memory we use in our PC's, Macs, Amigas, and Apples.
100ns access time @ 40 Mbytes/sec (remember: 32 bit data bus). I
think that the quickest transfer is 64 Mbytes/sec, which would come out to
about 62ns access time. This means that your rams actually have to be a bit
faster when you take into account bus buffering. It isn't unreasonable, and
I think you'd be able to (finally) take advantage of dynamic-ram's block-read
ability.
I especially like the fact that they do MMU address translation in
parallel with checking the cache. Anybody know what kind of page-table
cache the MMU has?
-Matt
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husc6!husc4!hadeishi
From: hadei...@husc4.harvard.edu (mitsuharu hadeishi)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <262@husc6.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Sat, 27-Sep-86 18:33:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: husc6.262
Posted: Sat Sep 27 18:33:06 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 06:19:43 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP>
Sender: n...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU
Reply-To: hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi)
Organization: Harvard Science Center
Lines: 16
Keywords: new motorola chips mmu fast
Summary: The 68030 is MUCH faster than that . . .
In article <2...@gitpyr.UUCP> Rodney Ricks writes:
>The chip is said to run software 20% to 30% faster than the 68020.
I believe I read a press release about the 68030 in which it was stated
that the 68030 was capable of 8 MIPS, approximately 8 times that of the
VAX 11/780, and 2 times that of the 80386. This is at a clock rate
of 16-20 Mhz, I'm not sure which. The 68020 is capable of about 1.5
MIPS at a clock rate of 14 Mhz. This puts the 68030 at about 5 times
faster than the 68020 at the same clock rate. Apparently the 68030
uses what is called "Harvard parallel architecture". Now that Motorola
has released this chip, they have in *every category of chip* a far
superior chip than does Intel. 68030 > 80386, 68020 > 80286, 68010 and
68000 >> 80186, 8086, 68008 > 8088. The 68000 series chips are in every case
more orthogonally designed, faster, more compatible with each other,
and easier to program.
-Mitsu
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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!qantel!intelca!oliveb!glacier!Shasta!simoni
From: sim...@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Richard Simoni)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <877@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Mon, 29-Sep-86 00:13:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: Shasta.877
Posted: Mon Sep 29 00:13:15 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 13:36:33 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <262@husc6.HARVARD.EDU>
Reply-To: sim...@Shasta.UUCP (Richard Simoni)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 24
In article <2...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi) writes:
>Apparently the 68030
>uses what is called "Harvard parallel architecture". Now that Motorola
>has released this chip, they have in *every category of chip* a far
>superior chip than does Intel. 68030 > 80386, 68020 > 80286, 68010 and
>68000 >> 80186, 8086, 68008 > 8088. The 68000 series chips are in every case
>more orthogonally designed, faster, more compatible with each other,
>and easier to program.
I agree that the Motorola chips are nicer in many ways than the Intel chips.
But to say Motorola has "released" the chip is stretching things a bit. Not
only has the 68030 not been formally introduced as a product yet, but the
artciles I've read (e.g., Electronics, September 18, 1986) say volume
production is more than a year away. The 80386 is here now, and actually
has a system available (Compaq) which uses it. In other words, it's not
really fair to compare that which Intel has now with what Motorola will have
in a year. A more fair comparison is between the 68020 and the 80386.
Rich Simoni
Center for Integrated Systems
Stanford University
sim...@sonoma.stanford.edu
...!decwrl!glacier!shasta!simoni
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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!caip!cbmvax!daveh
From: da...@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <807@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Sep-86 13:43:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.807
Posted: Mon Sep 29 13:43:47 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Oct-86 01:21:48 EDT
References: <877@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 50
> Xref: cbmvax net.micro.68k:327 net.micro.amiga:2836 net.micro.atari16:2165
net.micro.mac:2966
>
> In article <2...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi)
writes:
>
>>Apparently the 68030
>>uses what is called "Harvard parallel architecture". Now that Motorola
>>has released this chip, they have in *every category of chip* a far
>>superior chip than does Intel. 68030 > 80386, 68020 > 80286, 68010 and
>>68000 >> 80186, 8086, 68008 > 8088. The 68000 series chips are in every case
>>more orthogonally designed, faster, more compatible with each other,
>>and easier to program.
>
> I agree that the Motorola chips are nicer in many ways than the Intel chips.
> But to say Motorola has "released" the chip is stretching things a bit. Not
> only has the 68030 not been formally introduced as a product yet, but the
> artciles I've read (e.g., Electronics, September 18, 1986) say volume
> production is more than a year away. The 80386 is here now, and actually
> has a system available (Compaq) which uses it. In other words, it's not
> really fair to compare that which Intel has now with what Motorola will have
> in a year. A more fair comparison is between the 68020 and the 80386.
>
> Rich Simoni
Yea, they aren't expecting first silicon on the 68030 until next spring or
so, last I heard. And sure you CAN get a '386 system, like the Compaq, today,
or a 68020 system (a "Turbo" Amiga is in the same price range). But instead
of comparing virtual performance, the actual performance should really be
compared. Today's MS-DOS based 80386 system, like the '286 systems that
preceed it, are still emulating an 8088, still have software than only
supports 640K or so of normally mapped memory, etc. You can add UN*X for a
better throughput. The "Turbo" Amiga, and Amiga with a 14.4MHz 68020 board
and some fast 32 bit RAM will work much better with the "base" system
software. Every progam that runs on the Amiga has the potential to use the
whole 4 Gigabyte address space along with the faster speed and wider bus.
Also, some run-time loaded Amiga libraries can be replaced with libraries
that take advantage of the 68020's additional op-codes, 68881 coprocessor,
etc. Still, programs will have to be recompiled with a 68020 compiler to
take full advantage of the processor, and of course, UN*X could be added.
I think a close comparison of these two systems would indicate the current
"off-the-shelf" winner in the Motorola-Intel battle, at least for the $3000
to $5000 price range. We'll have to wait for an 80386 based workstation, to
compare against a Sun-3 or the like, for the title in that price range.
--
============================================================================
Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh
These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide
that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.
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From: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <200@mipos3.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Sep-86 16:26:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: mipos3.200
Posted: Mon Sep 29 16:26:36 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Oct-86 04:23:09 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP>
Reply-To: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Organization: Intel, Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 35
Keywords: here we go again...
I can't speak for Intel, and none of this should be taken as the opinion
of Intel, but...
...Motorola's "announcement" came in the same week that they chided
Intel for the 386's non-availability; the week that Compaq introduced
their box. Compaq must have gotten at least a few from us, since they
seem to have filled the channels of distribution pretty well, or at least
out here Computerland seems to have it, and Fry's is advertising it
(for a discount!) in their newspaper ads.
To put things in a historical sense, Motorola held the same kind of blitz
a few months after Intel came out with the 286, describing the 68020,
the 68881(?) floating point unit, and the whatever-the-number-is paged
MMU, all well before their general availiblity, or even their first
silicon. I suppose that Intel should feel flattered in that it seems
to me that Mot, in each case, has conceeded defeat: the 68010 to the
286, the 68020 to the 386, and that in order to maintain any kind of
market share, they have to have a media blitz, rolling out their newest,
half baked, family jewels. Its all pretty comic!
And what about the new family jewels? Should I feel vindicated that Mot
has finally decided that on-chip memory management is a good idea? And
what about performance? Why would a new, ultra-high end user choose
the 68030 over, say, the Clipper, or the MIPS chips, each of which
(if you believe the numbers) should exceed the 68030's performance (with
the promise of delivering more sooner) and are available, in some semblance,
today?
--
The above views are personal.
I've seen the future, I can't afford it...
Ken Shoemaker, Microprocessor Design, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California
uucp: ...{ hplabs|amdcad|qantel|pur-ee|scgvaxd|oliveb }!intelca!mipos3!kds
csnet/arpanet: k...@mipos3.intel.com
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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!rutgers!caip!pyrnj!mirror!cca!lmi-angel!wsr
From: w...@lmi-angel.UUCP (Wolfgang Rupprecht)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <82@lmi-angel.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Sep-86 22:51:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: lmi-ange.82
Posted: Tue Sep 30 22:51:09 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Oct-86 00:50:14 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP>
Reply-To: w...@lmi-angel.UUCP (Wolfgang Rupprecht)
Organization: LISP Machine, Inc (Cambridge Engineering HQ)
Lines: 22
In article <> hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi) writes:
>[random discussion about 68030]... Now that Motorola
>has released this chip [well, no, they will release it in a year from
>now.. -wsr], they have in *every category of chip* a far
>superior chip than does Intel. 68030 > 80386, 68020 > 80286, 68010 and
>68000 >> 80186, 8086, 68008 > 8088. The 68000 series chips are in every case
>more orthogonally designed, faster, more compatible with each other,
>and easier to program.
Up to now I have always hated intel chips. In general they are *so*
contorted/poorly thought out, (some would even say buggy). Up to
now that is. I'm ready to to believe in 80386's. Lets face it, the
lack of *usable* memory management for the 68000 is laughable. The
68020 mmu is still vapor-hardware. When it finally arrives, one gets a
chip that has to have *lots* of logic around it just to allow it to
work in the same circuits that the 68020 used to work in. It will run
*much* slower than the 68020 however.
Remember, the 68020 is in the same generation as the 80386. (lets hear
some applause for intel.)
--
Wolfgang Rupprecht {harvard|decvax!cca|mit-eddie}!lmi-angel!wsr
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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ll-xn!nike!oliveb!intelca!mipos3!kds
From: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <205@mipos3.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 17:41:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: mipos3.205
Posted: Wed Oct 1 17:41:04 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 01:33:37 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
<280@husc6.HARVARD.EDU>
Reply-To: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Organization: Intel, Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 85
Keywords: here we go again...
In article <2...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi) writes:
>
> In re: Motorola's continual announcements . . . is it fair
>to compare the 68030 to the 80386, etc.?
>
> Yes.
>
> Firstly, it is clear that Motorola's architecture is a lot
>cleaner than Intel's. Certainly their chips may be a year or so behind
>Intel (i.e. 68020 and 80286, 68010 and 80186, etc.); but their chips are
>far superior. Even if you insist on comparing the 68010 to the 80286
>it is not clear at all that the 80286 wins hands down; the '010 has an
>architecture more well-suited to implementation of multi-level interrupt
>multitasking systems. The fact is that for implementation of real
>systems the 68010 in many cases is a far more appropriate choice than
>the 80286. (about Unix implementation, see BYTE article last month.)
>And of course the 68020 is far and away the superior chip compared
>to the 80286, and the '020 has been available in real computer systems
>for some time. From this point of view it seems reasonable to compare the
>'286 to the '020 rather than the '010, and here the comparison is clear.
>'020s are used (as you all know) in Sun workstations, TurboAmigas, etc.
>'286s are used in ATs. There is really no comparison between the two
>classes of machine.
Of course, there is no comparison between the two classes of machines, because
you in here introduce more than two classes of machines. I would not
put Sun workstations and Turbo Amigas in the same class of machine simply
because the Amiga does not support any kind of memory management. If you
want to have a grown-up machine, one that supports multi-user/multi-tasking
you really need to have this. I have used 68k boxes without that have
tried to do it, and it works, but you are just asking for trouble. That
the same 286-based box can support an unprotected os like ms-dos and
a protected os like Unix means that it can function in either of these
two classes. Not until you have the 68030, or you make an entire subsystem
plug in with a 68020 and an mmu, can you claim to have upgraded your Amiga
the way plugging a 286 upgrades a pc.
> Another important point to make is that operating systems implemented on
>the 68000 series chips will run fairly well on the higher-grade chips;
>UNIX, AmigaDos/Intuition, Mac Operating System, ST GEM/TOS, et cetera are
>all capable of taking advantage of the higher-level chips' capabilities
>(especially UNIX and AmigaDos/Intuition), although some optimization
>wouldn't hurt. From the point of view of the Intel chips, the 8088-based
>MS-DOS is nothing more than a kludge on the 80286 and 80386; for that
>operating system to take advantage of those chips a complete re-write
>must be done, and is in the process of being completed as we speak.
>This new operating system however will most likely be incompatible to
>a great degree with the old, 8/16-bit MS-DOS and will contain major bugs
>for some time. AmigaDOS/Intuition has been running on the 68000 for
>about a year now, and Unix implementations for the 68000/68010 chips have
>been floating around for at least 3 or more years. To compare the 80386
In the first place, msdos, while not taking advantage of the functionality
of the 286 or the 386, is certainly not a kludge when run on them. In
addition, when you go from one type of 68* based box to another, you also
need to rewrite the operating system, because the memory management systems
are incompatible. People have also generated 286-based cards that plug
into plain old IBM pcs and have gained a significant performance upgrade, while
running their old software. I'm sure the same thing can and will happen
with the 386. And Unix implementations for 8086-based chips have been
floating around for at least 5 years. MS-DOS already is a 16-bit os, and
always has been. When going from a 68020 to a 68030, you will have to
rewrite the os to take advantage of the memory management that the 68030
provides...otherwise you just have a little faster 68020, much like you
can use a 286 as a faster 8086. How about if we compare apples to apples?
Can you say "incoherency?"
>P.S. BTW, have you guys heard about the 78000 (!?) See Nanobytes in
>the latest BYTE (the //GS issue). This is a RISC uprocessor with a
>rated speed of 20 (VAX-equivalent?) MIPS . . . this kind of speed
>totally blows away the RT PC (note: the RT PC performed just a hair
>better than an PC AT in benchmarks . . . see PC World or PC magazine
>of a month ago. . . not very impressive . . .)
Oh, this is great. Yet another paper product. This one, they haven't
even had a press release on! I guess it must be more than a year
away (:-)).
--
The above views are personal.
I've seen the future, I can't afford it...
Ken Shoemaker, Microprocessor Design, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California
uucp: ...{ hplabs|amdcad|qantel|pur-ee|scgvaxd|oliveb }!intelca!mipos3!kds
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From: hadei...@husc4.harvard.edu (mitsuharu hadeishi)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <280@husc6.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Tue, 30-Sep-86 15:38:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: husc6.280
Posted: Tue Sep 30 15:38:12 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Oct-86 06:14:38 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
Sender: n...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU
Reply-To: hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi)
Organization: Harvard Science Center
Lines: 49
Keywords: here we go again...
Summary: Motorola's continual announcements
In re: Motorola's continual announcements . . . is it fair
to compare the 68030 to the 80386, etc.?
Yes.
Firstly, it is clear that Motorola's architecture is a lot
cleaner than Intel's. Certainly their chips may be a year or so behind
Intel (i.e. 68020 and 80286, 68010 and 80186, etc.); but their chips are
far superior. Even if you insist on comparing the 68010 to the 80286
it is not clear at all that the 80286 wins hands down; the '010 has an
architecture more well-suited to implementation of multi-level interrupt
multitasking systems. The fact is that for implementation of real
systems the 68010 in many cases is a far more appropriate choice than
the 80286. (about Unix implementation, see BYTE article last month.)
And of course the 68020 is far and away the superior chip compared
to the 80286, and the '020 has been available in real computer systems
for some time. From this point of view it seems reasonable to compare the
'286 to the '020 rather than the '010, and here the comparison is clear.
'020s are used (as you all know) in Sun workstations, TurboAmigas, etc.
'286s are used in ATs. There is really no comparison between the two
classes of machine.
Another important point to make is that operating systems implemented on
the 68000 series chips will run fairly well on the higher-grade chips;
UNIX, AmigaDos/Intuition, Mac Operating System, ST GEM/TOS, et cetera are
all capable of taking advantage of the higher-level chips' capabilities
(especially UNIX and AmigaDos/Intuition), although some optimization
wouldn't hurt. From the point of view of the Intel chips, the 8088-based
MS-DOS is nothing more than a kludge on the 80286 and 80386; for that
operating system to take advantage of those chips a complete re-write
must be done, and is in the process of being completed as we speak.
This new operating system however will most likely be incompatible to
a great degree with the old, 8/16-bit MS-DOS and will contain major bugs
for some time. AmigaDOS/Intuition has been running on the 68000 for
about a year now, and Unix implementations for the 68000/68010 chips have
been floating around for at least 3 or more years. To compare the 80386
with the 68020 is absurd; the '020 has been around for some time now and
has a lot of debugged software/operating systems running on it; the
'030 will inherit that software and blaze with it whereas what will the
'386 do? Run character-stream UNIX and 640K MS-DOS?
-Mitsu (hade...@husc4.UUCP)
P.S. BTW, have you guys heard about the 78000 (!?) See Nanobytes in
the latest BYTE (the //GS issue). This is a RISC uprocessor with a
rated speed of 20 (VAX-equivalent?) MIPS . . . this kind of speed
totally blows away the RT PC (note: the RT PC performed just a hair
better than an PC AT in benchmarks . . . see PC World or PC magazine
of a month ago. . . not very impressive . . .)
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From: m...@mips.UUCP (John Mashey)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030; ad claims; big I vs big M
Message-ID: <709@mips.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Sep-86 21:45:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: mips.709
Posted: Tue Sep 30 21:45:59 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 02:26:14 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
Reply-To: m...@mips.UUCP (John Mashey)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 106
Keywords: here we go again...
In article <2...@mipos3.UUCP> k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~) writes:
>I can't speak for Intel, and none of this should be taken as the opinion
>of Intel, but...
>...Motorola's "announcement" came in the same week that they chided
>Intel for the 386's non-availability; the week that Compaq introduced
>their box.
>
>To put things in a historical sense, Motorola held the same kind of blitz
>a few months after Intel came out with the 286...
>.... I suppose that Intel should feel flattered in that it seems
>to me that Mot, in each case, has conceeded defeat: the 68010 to the
>286, the 68020 to the 386, and that in order to maintain any kind of
>market share, they have to have a media blitz, rolling out their newest,
>half baked, family jewels. Its all pretty comic!
>
>And what about the new family jewels? Should I feel vindicated that Mot
>has finally decided that on-chip memory management is a good idea? And
>what about performance? Why would a new, ultra-high end user choose
>the 68030 over, say, the Clipper, or the MIPS chips, each of which
>(if you believe the numbers) should exceed the 68030's performance (with
>the promise of delivering more sooner) and are available, in some semblance,
>today?
Normally, I to stay away of Intel vs Motorola wars (it's more fun watching the
missiles go overhead!), but since MIPS' name got dragged in,
and since there have been an awful lot of fuzzy performance claims thrown
around lately in this newsgroup, and in advertising, I couldn't resist.
Several recent Intel and Moto ads have cited Dhrystones to prove performance:
1) The Intel ad claimed that the 386 was faster than any other 32-bit micro,
and was a 4-VAX-MIP machine because it did 6133 Dhrystones at 16Mhz, versus a
VAX 11/780's 1662.
2) Then, a Moto ad appeared that complained about the unreality of the
Intel hardware environment used to get those numbers, versus reality of
using a 25Mhz 68020 in a SUN-3/200. (This was the apples-to-oranges ad that
appeared lots of places). Some of this was pretty reasonable, but they did
fudge a little, claiming that Dhrystone writes had to go to main-memory DRAM.
The SUN-3/2xx boxes use a big 64K write-back cache, with a well-designed
memory subsystem, i.e., a pedal-to-the-metal, all-out design.
This got 6362 Dhrystones.
3) Now: *REALITY*:
a) Dhrystones aren't all that good indicator of overall performance.
An 8600 gets about 5,000-6,000 Dhrystones, and people (accurately)
characterizes an 8600 as about 4-4.2X an 11/780 performance. The
benchmark randomly happens to correlate with reality, somewhat.
b) Small, individual benchmarks just don't mean a whole lot. Dhrystone
can chew up to 30% of the total time in strcpy(). We certainly don't
use it for serious performance characterization.
c) People who talk about "this chip is an N-Mips chip" are missing
the boat: you have to say "This chip, at XMhz, with specified memory
system, and specified software environment, runs at some speed
relative to other machines." There have been some wild commetns in
this newsgroup and some other ads that are nearly meaningless.
d) Ignore "peak mips" claims that you see in ads: I've recently seen
that a 25Mhz 68020 averages 5Mips and does 12.5Mips peak. Likewise,
a 16.67Mhz 68020 (as in a SUN-3/1xx) is 8.3Mips peak. An 8Mhz MIPS R2000
does 8Mips peak, but is typically 2-3 times faster doing real stuff
than the 16Mhz 68020. Peak rates in non-real environments have little
to do with reality.
c) (to Moto): I'm not sure SUN-3/2xx's are shipping yet, but they are
at least real machines.
d) (to Intel): although Compaq 386's are shipping (fair), it will
be interesting to see if their memory system lets them equal 8600s,
as seems to be claimed.
4) Finally, like I said, I don't believe in Dhrystones, but since
I & M keep using it to show how fast they are, in self-defense, see:
11/780 1632 (in-house 4.3BSD)
68020 16.6Mhz 3243 (registers, -O, in-house SUN-3/160, 4.2BSD)
80386 16.6Mhz 6133 (from an Intel ad in last month)
68020 25Mhz 6362 (from a Moto ad, citing SUN 3/200, with 64K writeback
cache).
8600 5132-6423 (ULTRIX or 4.3BSD)
Clipper 33Mhz ???? (This is claimed as 5Mips, but I haven't seen
any numbers published. Can somebody supply them?)
R2000 8Mhz 10350 (MIPS M/500 development system, 16K I- + 8K D-cache,
4.3BSD, release 1.0, 8MB memory, 4-way interleaved,
up-to-rev produciton, boards. We use them and we're
shipping systems to customers; i.e., REAL, if not
yet in huge quantities.) WE CALL THIS AN HONEST
5X 11/780 SYSTEM FOR REAL STUFF, NOT 6.5X.
R2000 8Mhz 12300 As above, but with global optimization. [I can't tell
what versions I & M are citing.]
This part was also designed to run at 12.5Mhz and
16.67Mhz, and you can draw your own conclusions
on the performance. [No: they don't scale exactly,
but Dhrystone is so cache-resident that they come
close].
Bottom line: what counts is real benchmarks on real machines; it is
difficult to characterize machines without a lot of hard work; specifying
a machine by a single nebulous "Mips-rating" (except within same-architecture/
same-software families, perhaps) doesn't work very well.
Finally, if anybody believes that the Dhrystone numbers above mean that,
for example, that 16Mhz 386s and 25Mhz 68020s are REALLY generally as fast
as VAX 8600s, or that an 8Mhz R2000 is close to a an IBM 3083, then.......
I own this great bridge back East that I could let go at a good price!....
--
-john mashey DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!mash, DDD: 408-720-1700, x253
USPS: MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
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From: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <205@mipos3.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 17:41:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: mipos3.205
Posted: Wed Oct 1 17:41:04 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 01:33:37 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
<280@husc6.HARVARD.EDU>
Reply-To: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Organization: Intel, Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 85
Keywords: here we go again...
In article <2...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi) writes:
>
> In re: Motorola's continual announcements . . . is it fair
>to compare the 68030 to the 80386, etc.?
>
> Yes.
>
> Firstly, it is clear that Motorola's architecture is a lot
>cleaner than Intel's. Certainly their chips may be a year or so behind
>Intel (i.e. 68020 and 80286, 68010 and 80186, etc.); but their chips are
>far superior. Even if you insist on comparing the 68010 to the 80286
>it is not clear at all that the 80286 wins hands down; the '010 has an
>architecture more well-suited to implementation of multi-level interrupt
>multitasking systems. The fact is that for implementation of real
>systems the 68010 in many cases is a far more appropriate choice than
>the 80286. (about Unix implementation, see BYTE article last month.)
>And of course the 68020 is far and away the superior chip compared
>to the 80286, and the '020 has been available in real computer systems
>for some time. From this point of view it seems reasonable to compare the
>'286 to the '020 rather than the '010, and here the comparison is clear.
>'020s are used (as you all know) in Sun workstations, TurboAmigas, etc.
>'286s are used in ATs. There is really no comparison between the two
>classes of machine.
Of course, there is no comparison between the two classes of machines, because
you in here introduce more than two classes of machines. I would not
put Sun workstations and Turbo Amigas in the same class of machine simply
because the Amiga does not support any kind of memory management. If you
want to have a grown-up machine, one that supports multi-user/multi-tasking
you really need to have this. I have used 68k boxes without that have
tried to do it, and it works, but you are just asking for trouble. That
the same 286-based box can support an unprotected os like ms-dos and
a protected os like Unix means that it can function in either of these
two classes. Not until you have the 68030, or you make an entire subsystem
plug in with a 68020 and an mmu, can you claim to have upgraded your Amiga
the way plugging a 286 upgrades a pc.
> Another important point to make is that operating systems implemented on
>the 68000 series chips will run fairly well on the higher-grade chips;
>UNIX, AmigaDos/Intuition, Mac Operating System, ST GEM/TOS, et cetera are
>all capable of taking advantage of the higher-level chips' capabilities
>(especially UNIX and AmigaDos/Intuition), although some optimization
>wouldn't hurt. From the point of view of the Intel chips, the 8088-based
>MS-DOS is nothing more than a kludge on the 80286 and 80386; for that
>operating system to take advantage of those chips a complete re-write
>must be done, and is in the process of being completed as we speak.
>This new operating system however will most likely be incompatible to
>a great degree with the old, 8/16-bit MS-DOS and will contain major bugs
>for some time. AmigaDOS/Intuition has been running on the 68000 for
>about a year now, and Unix implementations for the 68000/68010 chips have
>been floating around for at least 3 or more years. To compare the 80386
In the first place, msdos, while not taking advantage of the functionality
of the 286 or the 386, is certainly not a kludge when run on them. In
addition, when you go from one type of 68* based box to another, you also
need to rewrite the operating system, because the memory management systems
are incompatible. People have also generated 286-based cards that plug
into plain old IBM pcs and have gained a significant performance upgrade, while
running their old software. I'm sure the same thing can and will happen
with the 386. And Unix implementations for 8086-based chips have been
floating around for at least 5 years. MS-DOS already is a 16-bit os, and
always has been. When going from a 68020 to a 68030, you will have to
rewrite the os to take advantage of the memory management that the 68030
provides...otherwise you just have a little faster 68020, much like you
can use a 286 as a faster 8086. How about if we compare apples to apples?
Can you say "incoherency?"
>P.S. BTW, have you guys heard about the 78000 (!?) See Nanobytes in
>the latest BYTE (the //GS issue). This is a RISC uprocessor with a
>rated speed of 20 (VAX-equivalent?) MIPS . . . this kind of speed
>totally blows away the RT PC (note: the RT PC performed just a hair
>better than an PC AT in benchmarks . . . see PC World or PC magazine
>of a month ago. . . not very impressive . . .)
Oh, this is great. Yet another paper product. This one, they haven't
even had a press release on! I guess it must be more than a year
away (:-)).
--
The above views are personal.
I've seen the future, I can't afford it...
Ken Shoemaker, Microprocessor Design, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California
uucp: ...{ hplabs|amdcad|qantel|pur-ee|scgvaxd|oliveb }!intelca!mipos3!kds
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well!das
From: d...@well.UUCP (David Shayer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <1870@well.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 01:41:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: well.1870
Posted: Thu Oct 2 01:41:08 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 05:35:12 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <262@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> <877@Shasta.STANFORD.ED
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 35
U>
>>In article <2...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi)
writes:
>>Now that Motorola
>>has released this chip, they have in *every category of chip* a far
>>superior chip than does Intel.
>I agree that the Motorola chips are nicer in many ways than the Intel chips.
>But to say Motorola has "released" the chip is stretching things a bit. Not
>only has the 68030 not been formally introduced as a product yet, but the
>artciles I've read (e.g., Electronics, September 18, 1986) say volume
>production is more than a year away. The 80386 is here now, and actually
>has a system available (Compaq) which uses it. In other words, it's not
>really fair to compare that which Intel has now with what Motorola will have
>in a year. A more fair comparison is between the 68020 and the 80386.
To say that Compaq has "released" an 80386 based computer is stretching
things a bit too, don't you think. They announced it, but said it would
be available after January. This is similar to what Motorola announced.
By the way, IBM is said to be readying an announcment in January for
their 80386 based machine, which will be available in June. And don't
forget that a multitasking operating system won't be available until
around June either. Until then, these 80386 machines are just big
fast PC's. Meanwhile, Apple is readying a 68020 based machine for
release early next year.
Isn't vaporware fun!
-----------------------
David Shayer @ the Well
"Most of the time, for most programmers, what a compiler produces
is not object code, but error messages."
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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!hoptoad!gnu
From: g...@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <1172@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 16:40:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1172
Posted: Thu Oct 2 16:40:24 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 06:39:34 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 16
In article <2...@mipos3.UUCP>, Ken Shoemaker writes:
> Should I feel vindicated that Mot
> has finally decided that on-chip memory management is a good idea?
Yes.
> And
> what about performance? Why would a new, ultra-high end user choose
> the 68030 over, say, the Clipper, or the MIPS chips...
Good question. Why would they choose the 80386 over these chips?
It's probably a very similar set of reasons.
(you get extra bonus credit if you just THINK about this and don't POST!)
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilm...@lll-crg.arpa
May the Source be with you!
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From: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <207@mipos3.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 20:31:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: mipos3.207
Posted: Thu Oct 2 20:31:34 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 10:18:42 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <262@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> <877@Shasta.STANFORD.ED
<1870@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Organization: Intel, Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 18
In article <1...@well.UUCP> d...@well.UUCP (David Shayer) writes:
>
>To say that Compaq has "released" an 80386 based computer is stretching
>things a bit too, don't you think. They announced it, but said it would
>be available after January. This is similar to what Motorola announced.
hardly. They are advertised, and are being sold, at least in this area
by Businessland, Computerland, and Fry's. Talking to salesmen at the
stores, they are going like hotcakes, but they are getting them in, and
selling them to real-live people.
--
The above views are personal.
I've seen the future, I can't afford it...
Ken Shoemaker, Microprocessor Design, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California
uucp: ...{ hplabs|amdcad|qantel|pur-ee|scgvaxd|oliveb }!intelca!mipos3!kds
csnet/arpanet: k...@mipos3.intel.com
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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!cbmvax!daveh
From: da...@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <833@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Oct-86 17:23:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.833
Posted: Fri Oct 3 17:23:11 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 12:16:59 EDT
References: <205@mipos3.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 123
> Keywords: here we go again...
> Of course, there is no comparison between the two classes of machines,
> because you in here introduce more than two classes of machines. I would not
> put Sun workstations and Turbo Amigas in the same class of machine simply
> because the Amiga does not support any kind of memory management. If you
> want to have a grown-up machine, one that supports multi-user/multi-tasking
> you really need to have this.
Its nice to have, but required only if your OS demands it.
> Not until you have the 68030, or you make an entire subsystem
> plug in with a 68020 and an mmu, can you claim to have upgraded your Amiga
> the way plugging a 286 upgrades a pc.
I don't claim that the 68020 upgrade for a 68000 machine is like a '286
upgrade for an 8088 machine. I claim its a generation removed. The 8088
is an 8/16 bit processor, the '286 a 16/16. The 68000 is a 16/32, the
'020 a 32/32. A processor with a good MMU can run UNIX, quickly, and have
all the advantages of a protected OS. A non-protected OS can suffer from
misbehaved programs and slow context swaps (if its multitasking, which the
MS-DOS operating system emphatically isn't. Oranges vs. oranges, remember).
A Turbo upgrade for an Amiga can deliver much the same level of performance
as a Sun and still use standard off-the-shelf Amiga software and operating
system, and it can take advantage of the extra capabilities of the 68020.
MS-DOS runs fine on a '286 PC, but it can't use the extended memory
addressing capabilities -- unless you kludge it, MS-DOS has a ceiling of
640K. AmigaDOS has a ceiling of 4 Gigabytes.
I wouldn't try to run UNIX on a basic Turbo Amiga; UNIX isn't designed
to run well without an MMU; the context swapping between processes is
going to make it a dog. But the Amiga Exec was designed to provide a fast
multitasking environment on a machine without an MMU. It supports 68000,
68010, and 68020 processors in a processor-independent way; the Amiga Exec
knows which processor is in place and provides functions to handle the
differences, like the different exception stacks. All the AmigaDOS
software will work as is with the 68020, or it can be upgraded to take
advantage of special 68020 enhancements. These upgrades, however, can
be incremental, as each of the many software subsystems in the Amiga Kernal
and DOS can be replace independently of each other. How much of the
'286 instruction set, etc. will even work under MS-DOS, assuming I were
to, say, rewrite the floating point libraries for the '286 and '287
coprocessor?
Of course an unprotected multitasking environment is dangerous for poorly
behaved programs, but so is a single tasking environment on a machine
without adequate hardware support (like a PC). I wouldn't expect to
see a good UNIX running on the Amiga without an MMU; then again, an 80286
UNIX has to deal with its own set of inefficiencies, namely the 64K
paging limitations that still exist even in protected mode. For a state
of the art UNIX environment I need to an an MMU to my Amiga, you need to
add a '386 to your PC. An integral/standard MMU is a good idea; Intel
finally go one right :-).
> In the first place, msdos, while not taking advantage of the functionality
> of the 286 or the 386, is certainly not a kludge when run on them.
True. Lots of folks think the 8086 modes are kludges; I believe they're
not. And the problems with the '286 native mode and MS-DOS are due to
both the design of the '286 and the design of MS-DOS.
> In addition, when you go from one type of 68* based box to another, you
> also need to rewrite the operating system, because the memory management
> systems are incompatible.
Not helped much by the two different late-coming 680xx MMUs. I know, any
standard MMU is better than none at all.
> People have also generated 286-based cards that plug into plain old IBM pcs
> and have gained a significant performance upgrade, while running their old
> software. I'm sure the same thing can and will happen with the 386.
That's really only the advantage of going to a 16 bit (or 32 bit) bus
versus the old 8 bot of the 8088, plus the faster speed of the thing. But
like I said, I can get a much more significant increase in power with the
68020 card in the Turbo Amiga -- double the clock speed, double the data
fetch, and extend that memory limit to the full 32 bit address bus. Now
I know that this can't be done with every 68000 based micro; many of them
do thing that require a 68000 only. That's an OS design issue. And why
I'm glad I have an Amiga.
> And Unix implementations for 8086-based chips have been floating around for
> at least 5 years. MS-DOS already is a 16-bit os, and always has been.
> When going from a 68020 to a 68030, you will have to rewrite the os to take
> advantage of the memory management that the 68030 provides...otherwise you
> just have a little faster 68020, much like you can use a 286 as a faster
> 8086. How about if we compare apples to apples? Can you say "incoherency?"
I'll leave the "incoherency" to you. You're flaming for running a 68000
with no MMU, then you suggest Unix for 8086-based chips? If I want
segmentation as a form of memory mamagement, there's nothing stopping
me from requiring my 68000 environment to support only register
relative addressing. But anything that _requires_ 64K segments shouldn't
be bothering with UNIX. And as I said, my move to an '020 or '030 already
gives me much more than just a faster 68000. To use an MMU would require
a few sections of the OS to be rewritten, but its no big deal. The
hard part is going the other way, which is why memory management is
required for UNIX speed, protection issues aside.
>>P.S. BTW, have you guys heard about the 78000 (!?) See Nanobytes in
>>the latest BYTE (the //GS issue). This is a RISC uprocessor with a
>>rated speed of 20 (VAX-equivalent?) MIPS . . . this kind of speed
>>totally blows away the RT PC (note: the RT PC performed just a hair
>>better than an PC AT in benchmarks . . . see PC World or PC magazine
>>of a month ago. . . not very impressive . . .)
>
> Oh, this is great. Yet another paper product. This one, they haven't
> even had a press release on! I guess it must be more than a year
> away (:-)).
> --
> The above views are personal.
>
> I've seen the future, I can't afford it...
> Ken Shoemaker, Microprocessor Design, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California
> uucp: ...{ hplabs|amdcad|qantel|pur-ee|scgvaxd|oliveb }!intelca!mipos3!kds
> csnet/arpanet: k...@mipos3.intel.com
--
============================================================================
Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh
These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide
that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.
Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!gatech!gitpyr!rodney
From: rod...@gitpyr.UUCP (RODNEY RICKS)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <2324@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Oct-86 22:59:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.2324
Posted: Fri Oct 3 22:59:52 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Oct-86 18:36:42 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
<280@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> <205@mipos3.UUCP>
Reply-To: rod...@gitpyr.UUCP (RODNEY RICKS)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.
Lines: 29
Keywords: here we go again...
In article <2...@mipos3.UUCP> k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~) writes:
> Not until you have the 68030, or you make an entire subsystem
>plug in with a 68020 and an mmu, can you claim to have upgraded your Amiga
>the way plugging a 286 upgrades a pc.
Actually, one can easily support this claim. In both cases, you still have
the same level of memory protection as before. Correct me if I'm wrong (and
I know you will :-)), but MSDOS doesn't work in the 80286 protected mode, does
it? Since this is this case, upgrading to a 286 does not give any more
protection when using the standard OS. Sure, you have memory protection for
UNIX and its clones, but if that's what you're talking about, then you're
comparing apples and oranges (which is quickly becoming a very popular term
in this discussion).
>>P.S. BTW, have you guys heard about the 78000 (!?) See Nanobytes in
>
>Oh, this is great. Yet another paper product. This one, they haven't
>even had a press release on! I guess it must be more than a year
>away (:-)).
According to the BYTE article, it is due in the first quarter of next year.
Rodney Ricks,
(Not officially respresenting...) The 64 Store. Atlanta, Georgia 30339
UUCP: ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!rodney
or : !gatech!gt-oscar!rodney
Mail: 4265 Hidden Valley Dr. College Park, Ga. 30349
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Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!henry
From: he...@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <7183@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Oct-86 01:54:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7183
Posted: Sat Oct 4 01:54:36 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 01:54:36 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP>, <200@mipos3.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 20
Keywords: here we go again...
> And what about the new family jewels? Should I feel vindicated that Mot
> has finally decided that on-chip memory management is a good idea? ...
Only when Intel decides that on-chip caches are a good idea. The 68030
has *both*. So does the Clipper, by the way. The MIPS chip set likewise
does the MMU and half (the hard half) of the cache. Where's Intel?
> ...what about performance? Why would a new, ultra-high end user choose
> the 68030 over, say, the Clipper, or the MIPS chips, each of which
> (if you believe the numbers) should exceed the 68030's performance (with
> the promise of delivering more sooner) and are available, in some semblance,
> today?
Probably no particularly good reason except compatibility. I notice,
however, that the line of argument has shifted slightly: we don't hear
the word "Intel" any more.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
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Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!henry
From: he...@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <7185@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Oct-86 02:00:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7185
Posted: Sat Oct 4 02:00:18 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 02:00:18 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP>, <82@lmi-angel.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 9
> ...Remember, the 68020 is in the same generation as the 80386...
Really? 386-based machines have just barely started shipping. And all
the software runs them as if they were 8088s, or 286s at best if you're
lucky. 68020 machines have been in the field, with software support, for
quite some time now. I'd say the 020 has a half-generation lead.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!lll-crg!hoptoad!gnu
From: g...@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.mac,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <1177@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Sat, 4-Oct-86 02:04:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1177
Posted: Sat Oct 4 02:04:46 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 14:04:07 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <262@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> <877@Shasta.STANFORD.ED
<3853@amdahl.UUCP>
Followup-To: net.micro.68k
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 38
[==> Followups have been redirected to net.micro.68k <== If you care
about this topic, please start reading about it there. The mac/amiga/atari
users have enough to talk about without Intel/Motorola flames. I'm just glad
nobody has tried including net.micro.pc, then the flames would really start!]
I believe it is correct to compare the 80386 with the 68020, on a feature
by feature basis. They are both the first 32-bit processor from each
company, have similar cycle and instruction times, addressing capabilities,
etc.
In the past Intel has been first to market each level of chip.
However, they spent too much time at the 16-bit level (on the 186 and
286, both of which took longer than expected), and Motorola worked hard
to get out of the gate first at the 32-bit level. (My favorite "why
IBM chose the 8088" rumor is that Motorola couldn't build them 1/4
million chips the first year and Intel could since they had been
ramping up longer. Be interesting to see if Motorola's taking the lead
at 32 bits makes any difference now.)
My impression is that the relative power of each chip relates strongly
to its design date. Thus, Motorola chips have tended to be more
powerful than the corresponding Intel chips, because they were designed
slightly later. The 80386 should be faster than the 68020, since it is
coming out about a year later. They made a big mistake in leaving out
the cache, though they did put in a neat feature for interleaved memory
access, so it probably runs in roughly the same speed range unless you
give it a fancy memory subsystem. (If a fancy memory is assumed,
though, then the faster possible clock rate on the 68020 comes into
play, maybe making it an even heat again.) The 68030 will be faster
than both, since it will be yet another year later. And so on...
I'm not going to argue the merits of Intel versus Motorola. It is clear
to me that both have learned from each other. Now it is up to us, the
users, to learn to write our stuff portably so we can move it to the machine
of whoever is learning the fastest at each point in time.
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilm...@lll-crg.arpa
May the Source be with you!
Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!henry
From: he...@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <7186@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Oct-86 02:05:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7186
Posted: Sat Oct 4 02:05:46 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 02:05:46 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 12
Keywords: here we go again...
> ... When going from a 68020 to a 68030, you will have to
> rewrite the os to take advantage of the memory management that the 68030
> provides...otherwise you just have a little faster 68020, much like you
> can use a 286 as a faster 8086. How about if we compare apples to apples?
Okay, we'll compare apples to apples: how's the 32-bit-mode code generator
for the 386 coming? If you don't have that, you just have a little faster
80286. Rewriting the code generator and recompiling everything strikes me
as rather more work than hacking up the MMU section of the kernel.
*Especially* since the 286->386 conversion is also going to mean hacking
up the MMU stuff to cope with 32-bit addresses.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!nike!ll-xn!mit-amt!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!
decwrl!glacier!mips!mash
From: m...@mips.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: The Motorola 68030
Message-ID: <713@mips.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Oct-86 19:28:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: mips.713
Posted: Sat Oct 4 19:28:55 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Oct-86 19:58:15 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
<280@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> <205@mipos3.UUCP>
Reply-To: m...@mips.UUCP (John Mashey)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 71
Keywords: here we go again...
In article <2...@mipos3.UUCP> k...@mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~) writes:
>In article <2...@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> hadei...@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi)
writes:
>>P.S. BTW, have you guys heard about the 78000 (!?) See Nanobytes in
>>the latest BYTE (the //GS issue). This is a RISC uprocessor with a
>>rated speed of 20 (VAX-equivalent?) MIPS . . . this kind of speed
>>totally blows away the RT PC (note: the RT PC performed just a hair
>>better than an PC AT in benchmarks . . . see PC World or PC magazine
>>of a month ago. . . not very impressive . . .)
>
>Oh, this is great. Yet another paper product. This one, they haven't
>even had a press release on! I guess it must be more than a year
>away (:-)).
Ken has a right to be skeptical on this one! It also illustrates the silly
ways in which 3rd and 4th-hand information propagate around. I quote what
the Byte issue says: "Sources with Motorola's microprocessor group (Austin, TX)
confirm that two new central processing units will be released by that
company in the near future. (Stuff on 68030)...Due in the first quarter of
next year is the 20-MIPS 78000 CPU. Sources said the 78000 is a RISC processor
that represents an evolutionary progression of the 68020."
What we have is: a) Somebody from Moto talking off-the-record to somebody
on the Byte staff. It is possible that not all Moto people would agree.
b) Byte prints this, so now it looks official-looking. c) Somebody else
mentions it in the net, and now, a chip that (I'd guess) hasn't yet been
taped out "totally blows away the RT PC." Now it sounds like it exists right
now... No wonder people get confused between claims and reality!
One has to wonder what even the 2 sentences in the article actually MEAN?
"Due in the first quarter.." Does that mean:
a) Appears in a machine you can login on?
b) Appears in a board?
c) Production quantities?
d) Sample quantities?
e) First silicon?
f) Announcement of when any of a-e will happen?
"20-MIPS 78000 CPU" Does that mean?
a) Runs at 20Mhz, and can do peak 1 instruction per cycle?
b) Is 20X a VAX 11/780 doing real work?
Note that the conversion from peak MIPS to VAX-equivalent MIPS (or any other
kind of real-live MIPS) can take on radically different factors: for example,
on 68020s, the division factor seems like 4 (i.e., 16.67Mhz designs gives
8 peak Mips (2 cycles/instr) ==> 2 VAX mips. Clippers have a factor of
about 6.6 (33 peak Mips ==> 5 Mips (according to published claims)).
Depending on what the 78000 really will be, it might be as low as a 5Mips
part (one would expect it to be higher).
"RISC processor that represents an evolutionary progression of the 68020."
What does this mean?
a) Does it run 68020 object code?
b) Does it run a subset of the 68020 instructions?
c) Is it different object code, but "philosophically like the 68020"?
Sigh. As one can see, if one reads the literature uncritically, things
that sound like information can be found to be rather content-free,
i.e., "real" information is found to be "virtual."
Note: none of this is meant as an attack on the 78000, but on the weird
process by which information leaks around and is jumbled up. As far as I
know, the 78000 hasn't been announced by anyone for the record, and is mostly
discussed with Moto customers (existing or potential) who want to do high-end
systems and show signs of picking other vendors' micro-processors.
Perhaps someone from Motorola might care to comment on the original article:
one can choose to believe a vendor or not, but nobody should ascribe high
credibility to 3rd-hand off-the-record comments, or knock the vendor for
such "information".
--
-john mashey DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!mash, DDD: 408-720-1700, x253
USPS: MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086