[rescue] Compaq Proliant 8000

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 28, 2004, at 12:14 PM, Patrick Giagnocavo +1.717.201.3366 wrote:
>>> The i860 was one of Intel's attempts to get away from x86, but it
>>> failed.
>>
>>   And the remains ended probably on Geometry Engine boards in Reality
>>   Engines. ;-)
>
> And also in some RAID controllers and RIPs for high end lasers.
>
> My understanding is that the context switch time was so high that a
> general purpose OS did not have good performance on the CPU.

   ...which I suppose would be fine because it's not a general-purpose 
CPU.

>   But, for a single-task operation like handling some drives or 
> rasterizing
> PostScript, they were good.

   Amazing, actually.  They really had to be programmed by hand, 
though...at the time they were being pushed, compiler technology was 
nowhere near advanced enough to effectively generate code for them.  
They are *hard* to program...but if you spend the time on it, Holy Shit 
they are fast.

           -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke