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To: pyramid.com!riscy@informatik.ee.edag.de
From: peter katzmann <PET@informatik.ee.edag.de>
Date: 25 Jun 93 09:11:56 CET
Subject: Support processor in the design
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High,
what is about to think of a communication and support processor. Some
people mentioned about several serial I/O's a other one would have
added sound support and we have also to handle a keyboard and
probably scsi and ethernet.
Normaly you could handle all from the CPU or get some smarter parts
which handle more themselve. But one possible solution could be to
add a common cheap 8 Bit processor like the 6809 and let him work as
a kind of communication processor.
Also what I prever is an little bit intelligent video subsystem. It
shouldn't be much but something like drawing line and Raster Op
should be possible, to decrease the heavy graphical work load of the
system.

p. katzmann
----

EDAG-Fulda | P. Katzmann | E-Planung | Steinauer Str.| 6400 Fulda
tel. 0661/6000-454/464 | W. Germany | in: pet@informatik.ee.edag.de

 
From caret@pyramid.com Fri Jun 25 19:05:58 1993
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From: caret@pyramid.com (Neil Russell)
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Subject: Re: Support processor in the design
To: riscy@pyramid.com
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 93 10:05:36 PDT
In-Reply-To: <MAILQUEUE-101.930625091156.448@informatik.ee.edag.de>; from "peter katzmann" at Jun 25, 93 9:11 am
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> High,
> what is about to think of a communication and support processor. Some
> people mentioned about several serial I/O's a other one would have
> added sound support and we have also to handle a keyboard and
> probably scsi and ethernet.
> Normaly you could handle all from the CPU or get some smarter parts
> which handle more themselve. But one possible solution could be to
> add a common cheap 8 Bit processor like the 6809 and let him work as
> a kind of communication processor.
> Also what I prever is an little bit intelligent video subsystem. It
> shouldn't be much but something like drawing line and Raster Op
> should be possible, to decrease the heavy graphical work load of the
> system.

Hi,
  Making the I/O co-processor a requirement could quickly make the
price of the board sky-rocket, if we're not careful.  It is nice to
consider these options in the hope that we could find something that
would be cheaper to add.  I don't think that a 6809 would fit this
bill.  Consider that we could add a R3041 (R300 for real cheap) to
do this for us$15 (plus the glue), but what is the justification?

An idea, one chip that could cover both of the above requests could
be the TI34010 graphics CPU.  Last I checked you could get them at
around us$30 (that was a year ago).

-- 
Neil Russell		(The wizard from OZ)
Pyramid Technology			Email:  caret@pyramid.com
3860 N. First Street			Voice:  (408) 428-7302
San Jose, CA 95134-1702			  FAX:  (408) 428-8845

 
