The original spec does call for the ability to run Win NT on the Teraflops machine. My manual describes the details on how to do so. In the good news, we did get Linux 2.0 running, although it never could access the MRC mesh interconnect.
The multiple register file architecture is nothing new -- several older processors have used it to hide the latency of a much slower memory subsystem.
A true virtualizable processor (VM/CMS anyone?) on the desktop is a cute idea. Yes, you could run multiple OS's on the single chip, but with the low cost of hardware these days it makes more sense to have a cluster of machines. Slap X on it and the network transparency makes it seem like a single boxen.
I'm not sure if I want my CPU handling DSP and other side duties, anyway. WinModems are an example of poor technology -- why have a $300 P2 spend half of its usefull cycles emulating a $10 DSP chip?
And, as a final aside, several older machines (VAX 11, etc) have had writable microcode. At boot time my 11/730 would read the microcode from a DECtape3. BSD used a different set of microcode from VMS.
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The original spec does call for the ability to
run Win NT on the Teraflops machine. My manual
describes the details on how to do so. In the good
news, we did get Linux 2.0 running, although it never
could access the MRC mesh interconnect.
The multiple register file architecture is nothing new -- several older processors have used it to hide the latency of a much slower memory subsystem.
A true virtualizable processor (VM/CMS anyone?) on the desktop is a cute idea. Yes, you could run multiple OS's on the single chip, but with the low cost of hardware these days it makes more sense to have a cluster of machines. Slap X on it and the network transparency makes it seem like a single boxen.
I'm not sure if I want my CPU handling DSP and other side duties, anyway. WinModems are an example of poor technology -- why have a $300 P2 spend half of its usefull cycles emulating a $10 DSP chip?
And, as a final aside, several older machines (VAX 11, etc) have had writable microcode. At boot time my 11/730 would read the microcode from a DECtape3. BSD used a different set of microcode from VMS.