[rescue] Apple WWDC Summary, Cube Computers

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 09:40:48PM -0700, Eric Josephson wrote:

> 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 hard to make use of, I mean that in general it is hard to get
compilers and/or docs on them.  Off of the top of my head, I
specifically mean the AT&T DSP3210 chips, the Motorola 56k1 chip, and I
believe the Intel i860 (I think there might be good compiler support,
but a lack of documentation about most boards that would use it).

> 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.

There were quite a lot of NuBus cards that had 2 or 4 AT&T DSP3210 chips
on them.  They were typically sold as Photoshop accelerators.