SPEED n. 1. a. To hasten. b. to send or dispatch with speed or haste. 2. a. To increase the speed or rate of; accelerate. Often used with up. b. To set the speed of (a machine). Some synonyms of SPEED are; hurry, hasten, quicken, accelerate, precipitate, and expedite.
Quicken and accurate refer to increase in rate of activity, growth, or progress. Expedite refers to action that furthers the quick and efficient accomplishment of something or accelerates its fulfillment.
By JACK JOHNSON
Mid-Columbia Macintosh Users Group
I think speed is the next best thing to Heaven. Oh, you wouldn’t think that of me when you see me drive by in a yellow 1972 Volkswagon Beetle. I drive the VW because it’s paid for and I save money by doing most of the work on it myself. I spend all my money on SPEED. No, no, not drugs but new Macintoshes that get faster with each new machine or third-party offerings that make the Mac I have even faster or better.
In reality, I spend a lot of money trying to keep up on the new technology being offered in the Macintosh community today. I’d love to try every new product that comes on the market. This would be an impossibility as new software and hardware arrive on the market every day. One new piece of hardware I was able to recently test was the Radius Rocket accelerator board for the Mac II, IIx, IIcx and IIci.
I tend to be a little leery when I put new hardware into a machine. All these new products work on the manufacturer’s configuration, you never quite know what effects it will have with your configuration. I always fear the worse so when a product works as advertised I’m elated.
This new offering from Radius, the Radius Rocket, offers the following features:
• State-of-the-art Motorola 68040 processor.
• NuBus installation, which allows accelerated NuBus communication with interface cards, such as high-speed SCSI and Radius display interface cards, that support block transfer.
• Built-in QuickDraw acceleration, which supports high-performance NuBus block transfer.
• Built-in Radius QuickCAD acceleration, which supports QuickCAD-compatible software.
• Compatibility with parity RAM (random access memory).
• Compatibility with virtually all Macintosh NuBus cards, for complete accessory card regardless of manufacturer.
I would describe this new product in one word, WOW!! I’m elated.
Processor Performance
Processor performance is rated in two ways. The first is the sheer speed of the processor, rated in how many instructions can be processed in a single second. For the advanced processors used in the Macintosh II family, this is rated in MIPS (millions of instructions per second).
The second rating indicates how many floating-point operations can be processed in a single second. This is rated in MFlops (megaflops).
The following table illustrates the relative levels of maximum performance for Rocket, compared with standard (unaccelerated) Macintosh computers.
(PUT MIPS TABLE HERE)
The table above shows that the MIPS rating of Rocket makes it about three times as fast as a Macintosh IIfx. However the integration of features incorporated in the 68040 processor, with advanced memory and NuBus interface circuitry, results in even more startling performance improvements:
• Up to four times the speed the Macintosh IIfx for QuickDraw graphics-intensive operations, such as scrolling and zooming.
• Up to five times the speed of a Macintosh IIfx for “floating point” mathematical operations.
The Data Path
Another performance consideration is how the processor communicates with the other components of the Macintosh system. For example, the processor must read and write data to the RAM used by the system. In addition, high-performance Macintosh systems use a separate NuBus interface card to control the display connected to the Macintosh.
To visualize how data is transferred within the Macintosh, imagine that the processor on the main logic board, the RAM and the NuBus cards are on three separate platforms — which they are, as far as the processor is concerned. There is a speed loss as the processor communicates with either the NuBus video card or the RAM. This inhibits the overall system performance — regardless of the processor speed.
The Radius Rocket overcomes this speed loss by moving the processor and the RAM onto a NuBus card.
The processor and RAM on the main logic board are still active to perform “low-level” input/output operations, such as keyboard entries and mouse movement.
This frees the Rocket’s 68040 processor to concentrate on time-critical processing operations, which further increases system performance.
To further enhance performance, Rocket uses special interleaving between its banks of memory — dramatically reducing the time it takes for the processor to access RAM.
System compatibility
The Motorola 68040 processor used in the Radius Rocket represents the future development platform for the Macintosh. Installing the Radius Rocket accelerator card represents a step toward future Macintosh compatibility.
The biggest advantage the Radius Rocket board has over the new ’040 Macs is the accelerator card leaves the processor and RAM on the Macintosh completely intact.
If it ever becomes necessary to use software that is incompatible with Rocket, the solution is as simple as accessing the Rocket control panel to turn off the accelerator. In other words, Rocket is installed in addition to the Macintosh’s processor and RAM.
With the new Apple ’040s you have to turn off the ’040 option and then all you have left is just a IIci. So far, I’ve not found any problems with any of my programs.
Future Possibilities
The Radius Rocket accelerator card is equipped with a special Processor Direct Slot (PDS). This slot allows the addition of cards with special features that would communicate directly with the 68040 processor installed on Rocket.
For example, an add-on card might feature custom processors for image compression, or a special high-speed SCSI interface to be used in conjunction with hard disk or optical storage drives. Radius – and other manufactures – are currently working on such products to extend further the high performance processing capabilities of the Radius Rocket accelerator card.
Simply stated, the Radius Rocket accelerator card represents the first true multi-processor Macintosh environment. For the first time, applications can be designed to take advantage of the 68040 processor on Rocket, as well as the processor on the Macintosh and additional processors that can be connected to the Rocket Processor Direct Slot.
I have written Santa several letters canceling all other wants and stressed an urgent cry of want for this great piece of electronics. I will own one like it before too long.
I think, instead of upgrading my Mac IIci to the new machines for $3,500, I’ll upgrade to the Radius Rocket. I would rather have my IIci with a Radius Rocket board installed than the Mac IIfx.
Cost you asked . . . now you sound like my wife. Retail is about $2,000 without memory. When the Rocket came on the scene it was retailing for around $3,700.
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