BeBox History
Be Newsletter #3 Extract
Issue 3, December 20, 1995
By Steve Horowitz
. . .
All of our software, of course, was still running on the dual-Hobbit, 3-DSP
machine. While we were questioning the wisdom of having specialized DSP chips
on the motherboard, we saw the entire future of the hardware cast in doubt when
AT&T canceled the Hobbit processor line. It was decision-making time at Be
again, and this time we saw the opportunity to make improvements in several
areas. We needed a new processor and the PowerPC line seemed appealing on a
number of fronts. First, it offered pretty good performance for the price.
Second, it had the backing of a number of industry leaders (Apple, IBM, and
Motorola) who assured its existence and design evolution. Last, but not
insignificant from our perspective, was that unlike the Hobbit, the PowerPC
chips had the ability to handle floating-point math very quickly. We saw this
as our opportunity to abandon the specialized DSP chips and gain a much simpler
system design. This new design retained the ability to process floating-point
numbers very quickly, and was also able to throw both PowerPC chips at general
system tasks if needed.
. . .
|
