4 ms·

isn't this the hobbit/crisp core that was supposed to go in the newton?

by Taniwha 3y ago

joezydeco 3y ago
No, Hobbit was a descendent of the AT&T Bellmac processor.
- fidotron 3y ago
  The end fate of Hobbit at Apple is not unrelated to ARM either (https://tompittard.com/media https://tompittard.com/media) : > "Tom Pittard and Paul Gavarini of ATG spotted the ARM architecture (late 1985), rightly inferring Acorn had shared 6502 experience and motives. Investigation began. Pittard and Gavarini went to work on the Möbius project. Their two-year effort created a board using a VLSI Technology ARM2 chip plus software emulating the entire Apple desktop computer lineup: a 6502 or 65C816 running Apple II code, and a 68000 running Mac code. All emulated code ran faster on the ARM2 processor than the corresponding native versions. ... Möbius terminated quietly - but Pittard kept the prototype in his office." ... "In the afterglow of Möbius, Tom Pittard did a presentation for Apple engineering teams on his benchmarks a few months after work halted. Heads turned. Of particular note were the results from Pittard's Lisp benchmarks on ARM2." ... "Tesler [Lary Tesler], a veteran of Xerox PARC and an expert on GUIs, saw Pittard's results. He grasped where the ARM architecture could take Newton [Apples first handheld device]"... "Tesler had an endgame in mind... He based that on the status of Hobbit [a competing processor design], Tom Pittard's ARM2 benchmark results, and roadmap discussions with the ARM development team."
- Taniwha 3y ago
  We hired one of the guys who worked on Apple's hobbit/crisp or the newton, he'd git his cpu back from the fab, worked first time, but politics suddenly went ARM - he quit
- Taniwha 3y ago
  Also no, hobbit was a CRISP (RISC) core, bellmac aka WE32x00 was a CISCy (68020 level) core
  - joezydeco 3y ago
    I said it was a descendent, meaning it evolved from the Bellmac/WE32X00. "The 20MHz 32-bit ATT92010 Hobbit, developed at AT&T’s Bell Labs, combines both complex and RISC design approaches. It can produce the highly compact code of a complex instruction set microrpocessor, critical in portable applications where memory space is at a premium, but like RISC designs, it supports single cycle instruction exectution and, hence, high performance" Source: AT&T press release. https://techmonitor.ai/technology/att_formally_launches_its_hobbit_microprocessor_for_handheld_communicators https://techmonitor.ai/technology/att_formally_launches_its_...
    - Taniwha 3y ago
      I spent a lot of time programming WE32X00s, they were very much similar to 68Ks/32ks - CISC descendants of vaxes. While I didn't get to program any of the CRISP cpus as I understand them they are much closer to 29Ks/SPARCs (RISC, with a form of register windows)
      - joezydeco 3y ago
        I did an assembly language course on the WE32100 and it was a pretty nice chip. When I tell people today about the STRCPY opcode their eyes light up. First in amazement that the opcode existed, then in horror at the damage that it could potentially cause.

isn't this the hobbit/crisp core that was supposed to go in the newton?

joezydeco 3y ago

No, Hobbit was a descendent of the AT&T Bellmac processor.

fidotron 3y ago
The end fate of Hobbit at Apple is not unrelated to ARM either (https://tompittard.com/media https://tompittard.com/media) : > "Tom Pittard and Paul Gavarini of ATG spotted the ARM architecture (late 1985), rightly inferring Acorn had shared 6502 experience and motives. Investigation began. Pittard and Gavarini went to work on the Möbius project. Their two-year effort created a board using a VLSI Technology ARM2 chip plus software emulating the entire Apple desktop computer lineup: a 6502 or 65C816 running Apple II code, and a 68000 running Mac code. All emulated code ran faster on the ARM2 processor than the corresponding native versions. ... Möbius terminated quietly - but Pittard kept the prototype in his office." ... "In the afterglow of Möbius, Tom Pittard did a presentation for Apple engineering teams on his benchmarks a few months after work halted. Heads turned. Of particular note were the results from Pittard's Lisp benchmarks on ARM2." ... "Tesler [Lary Tesler], a veteran of Xerox PARC and an expert on GUIs, saw Pittard's results. He grasped where the ARM architecture could take Newton [Apples first handheld device]"... "Tesler had an endgame in mind... He based that on the status of Hobbit [a competing processor design], Tom Pittard's ARM2 benchmark results, and roadmap discussions with the ARM development team."
Taniwha 3y ago
We hired one of the guys who worked on Apple's hobbit/crisp or the newton, he'd git his cpu back from the fab, worked first time, but politics suddenly went ARM - he quit
Taniwha 3y ago
Also no, hobbit was a CRISP (RISC) core, bellmac aka WE32x00 was a CISCy (68020 level) core
- joezydeco 3y ago
  I said it was a descendent, meaning it evolved from the Bellmac/WE32X00. "The 20MHz 32-bit ATT92010 Hobbit, developed at AT&T’s Bell Labs, combines both complex and RISC design approaches. It can produce the highly compact code of a complex instruction set microrpocessor, critical in portable applications where memory space is at a premium, but like RISC designs, it supports single cycle instruction exectution and, hence, high performance" Source: AT&T press release. https://techmonitor.ai/technology/att_formally_launches_its_hobbit_microprocessor_for_handheld_communicators https://techmonitor.ai/technology/att_formally_launches_its_...
  - Taniwha 3y ago
    I spent a lot of time programming WE32X00s, they were very much similar to 68Ks/32ks - CISC descendants of vaxes. While I didn't get to program any of the CRISP cpus as I understand them they are much closer to 29Ks/SPARCs (RISC, with a form of register windows)
    - joezydeco 3y ago
      I did an assembly language course on the WE32100 and it was a pretty nice chip. When I tell people today about the STRCPY opcode their eyes light up. First in amazement that the opcode existed, then in horror at the damage that it could potentially cause.