On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
> > AFAIK, the PS-300 was only capable of drawing vectors. If there was a
>
> I don't know if it could display bitmaps, but the manuals claim that it
> is a raster-scanned display (the PS390 _certainly_ is a raster-scanned
> display) that is designed to look like a vector display.
You may be right. Then again, I may be right. Or we might both be right.
Here's a nice picture of a PS300 with a caption that mentions both a
vector display and a raster display (I think the little one in the middle
is a dumb terminal):
http://www.inflab.bme.hu/hist/pictures/esps300pic.html
In any case, it was the dataflow software architecture that I found
interesting about the machine, and it reminds me of a hardware question
that you or some other hardware guru can help me with.
I found a dataflow language intriguing because it makes it clear what
processes can run in parallel. Everything is asynchronous and event
driven, which maps nicely to the real world and even maps well to modern
GUIs and operating systems.
So, why are all modern CPUs synchronous? Does a clock buy you anything
besides simplicity? Why not let logic run as fast as it can and add sync
points as required, the way nature intended.
-- Doug
Received on Mon Dec 21 1998 - 18:42:19 GMT