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From: John R Walliker <jrwalliker@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: New ISA board to play with transputers
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2025 11:18:49 +0100
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On 08/07/2025 11:10, john larkin wrote:
> On 07 Jul 2025 17:21:11 +0100 (BST), Theo
> <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>> john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Seems a shame to have an x86 core wasting time handling ethernet and
>>> printers and mice and memory sticks when they could be doing better
>>> things like running Spice.
>>
>> Many of those things are already happening outboard anyway - all those
>> things have processors in them.  What the CPU is doing is largely managing
>> the data transfer to and from the device.  eg the printer speaks PCL or
>> Postscript and the OS's workload is limited to firing the job at the printer
>> (USB/network) and the printer's CPU then decides where to put the ink on
>> the page.
>>
>> You can delegate that management oversight to another core if you like, but
>> then you need management oversight of *that* core.
>>
>>> My Windows 11 thing is running hundreds of processes right now. That's
>>> crazy.
>>
>> Windows problems :-)  But many of those things don't need to take much CPU -
>> they're ready to handle print jobs when you press Ctrl-P, but the rest of
>> the time they're ticking along in the background not taking much resources
>> because they don't need them.
>>
>> The OS is running thousands of kernel threads, but they're mostly blocked
>> (not scheduled) until they need to do something.  One thread per 'thing',
>> more or less.  All that thread needs is a few hundred bytes for its register
>> state so the impact is small.
>>
>>> Computing is a mess. A new hardware architecture would at least
>>> suggest a fresh start.
>>
>> Non-Windows, non-x86 architectures are available...
>>
>> Theo
> 
> The x86 is nearly the peak of the silly concept that the CPU is a big
> deal. Intel is heavily invested in that idea. ARM and Risc-V cores are
> fast and cheap and basically trivial amounts of silicon. We can have a
> zillion CPUs on a chip so don't benefit from the brutal complexity and
> inefficiency of trying to share just a few big ugly CPUs among
> hundreds of processes.
> 
> We use the RP2040 chip in some products. It's a dual-core 133 MHz ARM
> with lots of cute peripherials, including hardware state machines.
> It's 75 cents in any quantity. On the new version, the RP2350, they
> threw in a couple of RISC-V cores just for fun.
>
Maybe "just for fun" but it might give them a stronger position
when negotiating royalty rates with ARM.
John