Novell to launch quick-response Linux

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Interesting

10 microseconds is what, 1/100th of a second?

It's possible, if designed carefully. That's the equivalent of 100 frames every second for graphics. On older games, that's easy. I can play a game about, say, 5-10 years old and get such a framerate guarunteed for most of the time.

So - possible? Yes. Easy to guaruntee? Probably not.

It has a lot more to do with careful design than the speed of the computer - A GHz is 10^9, which means it can perform 10^7 operations in 10 milliseconds.

A 1024x768x24bit display only needs 2.4x10^6 bytes for a single refresh, leaving 7.6x10^6 cycles for non-graphical stuff. Plenty of room if you plan correctly.

BUT - I seriously doubt they're gonna do graphical stuff on the CPU that's performing the realtime stuff, so it isn't even really an issue.

"I could take a device (eg multiple processors - one processor just to do a specific task every 10 micro seconds and the other processor to update the display). However doing this would no longer be a general PC, it becomes a specific device."

WRONG. Your ordinary household PCs do it even today. It's called a "GPU" and it's found on most motherboards and all graphics cards.

That's what today's games do - have the GPU (or a separate CPU) perform the GUI stuff. No realtime 3D game today uses the CPU for graphics. It's all done on the GPU.

10^7 is plenty of cycles for doing stuff with, and you don't need to have the realtime processor handle the GUI.

Posted by: CobraA1   Posted on: 09/20/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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