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I think they also had far more basic peripheral and logic controllers. In the current era, the idea of a dedicated CPU or application specific hardware is norma

I think they also had far more basic peripheral and logic controllers. In the current era, the idea of a dedicated CPU or application specific hardware is normal an commonplace. They really just throw in cores willy nilly. I think back in the day, this would be crazy talk. You already spent god knows how much on the super special processor. The idea of doing it again so you could use RAM is madness.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Stac disk compression started out as a CPU-consuming TSR while the STAC Coprocessor Card dedicated accelerator appeared later. That they were able to eek out minimal performance drop for on-the-fly storage de/compression was a testament to creative engineering. SoftRAM95 was merely a cheap rip-off of something vaguely similar but intent on committing fraud rather than offering anything of value. macOS and Windows both include native memory compression that now makes sense CPU-wise for highly-compressible, colder regions that are warm enough to not swap out except under pressure.