how do the A1's ram and cpu buses compare against modern PCs?
MAI’s Northbridge is actually pretty good as a Northbridge for SDRAM class solution… IF they release that product in the Pentium II era they may have been the “NVIDIA” in core logics.
IF the claims are true, MAI’s Northbridge has ability give the concurrent AGP<>Memory access and CPU<> Memory access.
Such features has been done in NVIDIA’s nForce series core logics (with DDR and dual memory controllers).
With nForce’s Northbridge (IGP, SPP), it has the ability to use spare/excess bandwidth for filling it’s Northbridge’s cache via speculative pre-predication processor i.e. fetching common used data and store it on the Northbridge’s cache, thus bring the relevant data closer to CPU. Between K7 Athlon <> Northbridge chip, it uses EV6 bus architecture as found in DEC’s Alpha EV6 (e.g. scales up to DDR400). K7’s EV6 bus architectures has been eclipsed by K8's Hyper-transport bus architectures.
MAI Northbridge's circular buffer is interesting i.e. I don’t know IF it has speculative prediction feature as in NVIDIA's nForce.
the evolution path, how does it compare against the newer 64 bit cpus from Intel and AMD? Is
Refer to earlier links.
IBM commited in continuing the research and development?
They have Power5….
I've read that most of the next generation consoles will have a PPC, is this true? If so, will this help reducing the prices of ppc machines?
Embedded PowerPC 4xx processor is cheap enough (e.g. Nintendo Game Cube**).
**Subsidise to certain level by Nintendo’s games sales.
