6 ms·

It's also worth adding that none of this is new. There's always been a reason that the "C" in "CPU" has stood for "central". The idea that there are other, no

by JdeBP 3y ago

It's also worth adding that none of this is new. There's always been a reason that the "C" in "CPU" has stood for "central". The idea that there are other, non-central, processors around the place goes back a long time. Four particular ones come to mind: * The DPT range of SCSI host bus adapter cards, many years ago, had an full blown MC680x0 processor on the card. * Connor Krukosky, who famously installed a mainframe in his basement with a console front-end processor that was a PC machine running OS/2. * PC/AT keyboards had on-board microcontrollers running programs. * And of course who can forget the BBC Micro's Tube? It's the short period in history where people thought that computers came with only one processor that is the real oddity. (-:

jacquesm 3y ago
The Tube used the processor in the Tube as the CPU when it was connected but otherwise the CPU was the CPU in the BBC Micro itself. With the Tube CPUs connected (68K, Z80, 65C02, 32016 and more) the BBC processor served as I/O processor. The elegant and well adhered to OS calls made this a straightforward process, if your program ran on the BBC standalone it would work across the Tube for the 65(C)02, but for other coprocessors you had to at a minimum recompile and probably rewrite quite a bit of your code. https://sites.google.com/site/jamesskingdom/Home/computers-exposed/bbc-micro-second-processors?authuser=0 https://sites.google.com/site/jamesskingdom/Home/computers-e... In a typical PC there are > 10 actual processors in the various peripheral and controller chips, and then there is the management engine (a full blown computer in its own right) or equivalent and usually almost every peripheral will have one or more processors as well.
- lproven 3y ago
  IMHO this makes the PiTube Direct project perhaps even more impressive: it attaches emulated vintage microprocessors to the BBC Micro Tube interface, implementing the Tube circuitry in software. https://github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect https://github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect

by JdeBP 3y ago

jacquesm 3y ago

The Tube used the processor in the Tube as the CPU when it was connected but otherwise the CPU was the CPU in the BBC Micro itself. With the Tube CPUs connected (68K, Z80, 65C02, 32016 and more) the BBC processor served as I/O processor. The elegant and well adhered to OS calls made this a straightforward process, if your program ran on the BBC standalone it would work across the Tube for the 65(C)02, but for other coprocessors you had to at a minimum recompile and probably rewrite quite a bit of your code. https://sites.google.com/site/jamesskingdom/Home/computers-exposed/bbc-micro-second-processors?authuser=0 https://sites.google.com/site/jamesskingdom/Home/computers-e... In a typical PC there are > 10 actual processors in the various peripheral and controller chips, and then there is the management engine (a full blown computer in its own right) or equivalent and usually almost every peripheral will have one or more processors as well.

lproven 3y ago
IMHO this makes the PiTube Direct project perhaps even more impressive: it attaches emulated vintage microprocessors to the BBC Micro Tube interface, implementing the Tube circuitry in software. https://github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect https://github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect