Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!nic.MR.NET!shamash!nis!ems!srcsip!shankar
From: shankar@srcsip.UUCP (Subash Shankar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Stuff
Keywords: IIgs+?
Message-ID: <8913@srcsip.UUCP>
Date: 20 Sep 88 17:24:09 GMT
References: <167@thelink.UUCP>
Reply-To: shankar@wabasha.UUCP (Subash Shankar)
Organization: Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Camden, MN
Lines: 18

In article <167@thelink.UUCP> oliver@thelink.UUCP (Joel Sumner) writes:
>
>Some people have said that they are anxious for the 65832 chip to come so
>they can put it in a new IIgs... I have one technical question.. The 65816 is
>an 8/16 bit chip.. 16 bits on the inside and 8 bits to the rest of the
>computer... Since the 65832 is supposed to be pin-compatible with the 65816,
>then it will make that chip an 8/32 bit processor... How much of a speed
>increase is it if the chip can't talk to the rest of the machine?  Drive

Good point.  One of the things that has bugged me is the premature glee over
the 65832 Apple II.  I don't have (and never saw) specs on the 65832, but
one possibility is that it may have better arithmetic support then the 
65816 (i.e. multiplication, division, floating point).  But it's not
clear to me that a numeric coprocessor wouldn't be a better means of
attaining the same goal.  Adding fast barrel shifting opcodes would be
helpful too, but again this would be just as helpful on a 65816 (or 6502) as
on a 65832.  But in any case, you're right that the 65832 probably won't
solve some of the major performance problems of the Apple II line.