@PA-RISC CPU and the HPUX OS@}

Hello, Amigaphiles. Here is some information on the PA-RISC CPU. This is one
of the potential RISC CPU's for the next generation Amiga computer,  code
named 3D-RISC.

My company develops CAD/CAM software for the textile industry on Hewlett
Packard RISC workstations. The models we develop for are the 9000/712 /715
/720 and /735. In this artical I will try and shed some light on  the
PA-RISC CPU and the HPUX operating system. The PA-RISC is one of the CPU's
being investigated as the future Amiga's processor.

HPUX

We use the HP UNIX (HPUX) Open View operating system that comes as the
standard operating system of the 700 series workstations. This is a UNIX
operating system with a X-Windows based GUI. You can launch programs using
icons or UNIX commands. Along the bottom of the screen is a  control panel
that contains the following items.

-Clock ; Self expanitory. -CPU activity meter ; Shows CPU and HD activity
-Shell button ; Opens UNIX command line interface -Screen Buttons ; Six
buttons, each one brings you to another screen. -Desktop ; Allows you to
personalise your environment.

By pressing the screen buttons you can move between screens 1-6. Each screen
can have multiple windows (or programs) running. This is similar to how the
Amiga screens work with the following differences.

1) In HPUX each screen is a copy of the desktop screen (ie. Workbench). 

- The Amiga can only have one Workbench screen with programs allocating
  the other screens.

2) In HPUX all of the screens (limited to 6) must be at the same 
   resolution.

- The Amiga can have as many screens as there is available Chip Ram
  and each can be at a different resolution. The Amiga also allows you to
  "pull down" screens.

How well does HPUX and the PA-RISC multitask? Flawlessly. Our current office
system consits of a 720 with 128 MB ram, off of this system we have 6
Xterminals. An Xterminal allows you to have a GUI of the system, basically
our configuration is like a system having 7 independent graphics cards. We
have tried having one program running on each screen of each terminal at the
same time. Let's see thats 7 terminals X 6 screens each = 42 programs
multitasking! Of course this does slow the system down. Now you can see how
the Amiga's pre-emptive multitasking is based on UNIX. Now remember while
HPUX is is a powerful mutitasking OS, since it is a UNIX OS the system code
is 2MB in size but needs a minimum of 16MB RAM to get  the GUI up. Imagine
the Amiga's small and efficient operating system   running on a PA-RISC CPU,
do the words "Speed, Speed, SPEED" make your  pulse rise?

Below are some of the HP systems using the PA-RISC and what type of power
they have.

               712/80       715/64      715/80      715/100      735/125

 Clock          80MHz        64MHz       80MHz        100MHz      125Mhz
 SPECint92      84.3         66.6        83.5         100.1       136
 SPECfp92       122.3        96.5        120.9        137         201 
 MIPS           92           78          97           122         154 
 MFLOPS         30.6         24.3        30.5         37.8        57.4 
 Cache          256kb        256kb       256kb        256kb       256kb 
 RAM Potential  128MB        256MB       256MB        256MB       400MB

All in all I have to say the the above numbers are pretty impresive. The
most powerful system we have in hose is a 715/100. We can manipulate a 16MB
24bit graphic image with amazing speed (mere seconds for image proccessing).
Trying to mearly rotate a 4MB 24 bit image on a Mac Quadra 650 (25Mhz 68040,
32MB RAM) takes about 3-4 minutes. A 100MHz PA-RISC CPU  as the engine of
the Amiga that uses about 1MB for its OS (after  Workbench is loaded) starts
to make me salivate.

                         Pedro Aguiar
                         A4000/030
                         6617-3 Reafield Dr.
                         Charlotte, NC 28226
                         sophisus@cybernetics.net