Re: 65020 CPU? Look this...

["Laine Houghton" <laine@intergate.com>]

"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message 
2pednQOhY6CipL_fRVn-vA@comcast.com">news:2pednQOhY6CipL_fRVn-vA@comcast.com...
> Peter de Vroomen wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I still think 8 bit processors have their own right of existence. They 
>> are
>> much easier to program the right way, because their instruction set is
>> simple and to the point. But somebody should make an 8-bit processor with
>> the speed of a few Ghz :).
>
> I agree.
>
> But since one of the major attractive characteristics of 8-bit
> processors is their deterministic execution times, it is very
> unlikely that speeds like this could be reached using current
> technology.
>
> Processor speeds over 100MHz invariably require pipelined
> execution (of a complex, not simple variety) and caches,
> which almost guarantee the loss of simple timing determinism.
>
> I suppose one could always put the machine into a "lockstep"
> mode when timing determinism was required, with every memory
> access treated as a cache miss and every conditional branch
> treated as a pipeline flush, but that would be _much_ slower.
>
> -michael

I haven't actually looked into them. But given what you've said above I'm 
wondering what a Real Time Operating System gets you.
I can see the problems with preemptive multitasking. It would be interesting 
to look into the RTOS linux distribution for the specs.