> > You really *don't* know anything about PC video hardware, do you?
> Whatever you say. I would probably called a fool if I said that the floating
> point operations, memory management and code execution are done by one and the
> same hardware? You'd say that FPU, MMU and PU are NOT the same hardware. And
> I'd say they are - the CPU is an integrated conglomerate of all these (and of
> course more) components acting as ONE piece of hardware performing different
> tasks. If you show me how to take out MMU out of a processor and install it
> standalone, then I'll rest my case. The same, imho, is with the average video
> hardware - you've got one highly integrated chip that does all of the job.
> That's what I meant by "it's the same hardware". It's different circuits
> integrated in one chip.
As was already said, "you really don't know anything about hardware, do
you?" There is a *LOT* of current and semi-current hardware out there
that runs Linux or one of the *BSD unices... and that doesn't have the
mmu, fpu, et cetera integrated into the CPU.
examples: any 386 that had a coprocessor added. 486dlc machines with
coprocessor. Sun3 and early sun4 architectures. The FPU is most certainly
a separate unit, and sun hacked together their own mmu because motorola
didn't have one working that would do what they wanted at the time. MIPS
based platforms that don't have an integrated MMU or FPU, but that can
have one cobbled on as a peripheral.... (I know IDT makes a few of
these... :) ) I'll not swear that the sun4's are as spread out among
separate chips as the sun3's, since i havent' been inside anything less
than a sparcstation 5 in the last six months or so.
basically what i'm saying is that *none* of the classic hardware designs
had all that stuff integrated together. What a pentium "CPU" really
consists of is a cpu+fpu+mmu+cache in a single package.
whaddya mean, a video card is all one chip??? when i see one set up like
that i think i'll jump out the window or something. :) you at least get a
couple of different components on the card.... *chuckle*
does anyone else remember that funky card from a couple of years back that
had one S3-968 on each RGB channel????? :) certainly much better than
the trash that they try to sell today.....
--elijah
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