*BSD News Article 61740


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From: jarle@idt.unit.no (Jarle F. Greipsland)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: NetBSD for i80960?
Date: 10 Feb 1996 19:48:21 +0100
Organization: Free Hardware Foundation, UnLtd.
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Sender: jarle@ikke.idt.unit.no
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References: <DMB840.FDB@lut.ac.uk> <4fanij$jiu@news.indy.net>
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In-reply-to: ziggy@village.instaview.com's message of Wed, 07 Feb 1996
	20:25:18 GMT
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In article <4fanij$jiu@news.indy.net>, ziggy@village.instaview.com (Ziggy Stardust) writes:
>cs@cloud9.net (Carl S. Shapiro) wrote:
>> I think Intel had bigger plans for the i960 once - they were going to
>> use it at the centre of soem multiprocessor machine made by Biin (a joint 
>> venture? of theirs which never made it very far).

Yup.  But I think someone at Intel saw the 960 as a serious competitor to
the x86-line, and that pushing the i960 as a general purpose microprocessor
might lead to Intel competing with Intel on some major design wins.  Thus,
the processor family was more or less curtailed to the embedded
controller market.  Notable exceptions are some of the familiy members sold
in the military market.  The MC and MM (++) variants are really nice chips,
and have built in MMUs, inter-processor communication etc.  But, alas,
you've got to wear olive green clothes and be backed by a national budget
in order to buy them (almost).

> 	I saw a lot of them in the bigger HP printers.....pretty sad, better
> cpu in my printer than my desktop :)

How about a NetBSD/deskjet port ;-)?

						-jarle
-- 
If an undetectable error occurs, the processor continues as if no error
had occurred.			-- IBM S/360 Principles of Operation