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A comment on Stack Computers: 4.4 Architecture of the Novix NC4016 (1989). Parent comment

Re:Stack Computers: 4.4 Architecture of the Novix NC4016 (1989) by jacquesm on Friday September 20, 2019 @04:11AM (#21024303)
That all changed when high level primitives and floating point operations were moved to the graphics co-processor. SIMD at that level was a game changer. I wrote a graphics driver for the BBC Micro to use the Elektor 'GDP' as an output device, it totally blew the 8 bit CPU of the day out of the water.

These things tend to oscillate, presumably one day there will be another generation of CPUs that is much closer to our current CPU/GPU combo that will outperform GPUs and then the cycle will start over again.

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Re:Stack Computers: 4.4 Architecture of the Novix NC4016 (1989) by kjs3 on Friday September 20, 2019 @04:31PM (#21030951)
it totally blew the 8 bit CPU of the day out of the water

I think the counterargument in this context would be "...until we all went to 16-bit processors.". But I understand the point you're making.

These things tend to oscillate

I think you're of course correct, and I don't think the original paper disputes that. What I think (without much research) has happened is that the period of that oscillation has dramatically expanded since the paper was written.

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