SUMMARY: Comments wanted on Intel i860

[Ning Zhang]

In article <28701 at megaron.cs.arizona.edu> rupley at cs.arizona.edu (John Rupley) writes:
>:From: rupley at cs.arizona.edu (John Rupley)
>:I would appreciate any comments on use of the Intel i860 processor.
>:What systems or cards were used?  What OS?  UNIX?
>:What compilers?  Advice and suggestions?

When I was in Germany, I had tried to port my Radiosity/Raytracing/Zbuffer
package to some add-on i860 cards for PCs.

1. DSM i860 Card (Munich, Germany): Only on UNIX V platform, using MetaWare
   C860 compiler.
2. MicroWay 860 Card (MA, USA): Designed and Manufactured in England. With
   transparent interface between I860 CPU and host 386 chip. But only supports
   MicroWay compilers.
3. Datapath Merlin 860 Card (Nottingham, UK): With graphics copressor and
   vedio ram. Very limitted software support (you have to build your own
   interface, I/O handling and memory management). Supports any COFF files
   generated by MetaWare C386, GreenHill C386, etc.

The performace of the cards are the same. The difference is the software
development environment.  I finally chose Datapath's Merlin card as it can
also be used as a very fast graphics accelerator, though I had spent a lot
time to build my own transparent interface like MicroWay's.

-Ning