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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: DMA is obsolete
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2025 01:20:04 -0000 (UTC)
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On 27 Apr 2025 19:35:08 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

> Of course you can customise your ISA with extra instructions for doing
> the heavy lifting, but then arguably it's not really a CPU any more,
> it's a 'programmable DMA engine'.  The line between the two becomes very
> blurred.

In the old mainframe world, they called that an “I/O channel”. See also 
the RP2040 chip from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.