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INFO-MAC Digest Sunday, 21 Aug 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 77 Today's Topics: Higher speed co-processors for Mac II and MacWorld Expo Review Sound Leech 0.80 (3 parts) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Aug 88 17:21 EDT From: "RCSDY::YOUNG"@gmr.com Subject: Higher speed co-processors for Mac II and MacWorld Expo Subject: Review date: 8/18/88 subject: Latest Macintosh II Developments to: Info-Mac from: Richard A. Young YOUNG@GMR.COM Computer Science Department General Motors Research Laboratories Warren, MI 48090-9055 Note: If any INFO-MAC'ers have suggestions, corrections or comments to add to these remarks send to me at YOUNG@GMR.COM and I will collect and post. Summary A number of new products are being offered for the Macintosh II relating to high-performance CAD and vision applications, as well as interconnectivity issues to DEC and IBM computers. This INFO-MAC posting focuses on a recent trip to Tektronix to evaluate their TK88K-P concurrent processor plug-in board for the Mac II, and a visit to MacWorld Expo in Boston, which had about 150 vendors and 40,000 people attending. Mac II Performance Enhancers Seven options for increasing the performance of the Mac II have been investigated so far. These are listed in the current priority order of their interest for our purposes. This list is still subject to considerable change as more information is obtained. Criteria are ease of programming and debugging, raw speed, cost, intrinsic research interest, and meeting GM divisional needs. 1. TK88K-P Board. Tektronix has produced the first commercially available board featuring the new 88100 microprocessor chip from Motorola. This reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chip features one step per machine cycle and a full 51 instructions, which is much larger than other RISC chips. Its specs place it in a class considerably above other currently available RISC chips such as the SUN SPARC, AMD29000, and MIPS R2000. It is currently clocked at 20 megahertz, which produces 17 MIPS or 6 megaflops (MF). For comparison, our tested LINPACK results on the Mac II by itself rate it at 0.054 MF, with the MicroVax II at 0.13 MF, the SUN 3/260 with floating point accelerator at 0.46 MF, and the Cray X-MP-2 at 24 MF. In addition to the 88100 chip, the board has three cache memories of 32K each, and 8 megabytes of on-board memory. The complete board sells for $15,000, or $2500/MF. This compares favorably with the Mac II alone at $91,000 /MF, the SUN 3/160 at $111,000/MF, the MicroVax II at $138,000/MF, and the Cray X-MP-2 at $708,000/MF. (These are rough ballpark estimates only). The TK88K-P board works in a co-processor fashion with the Mac II 68020, which does user interface and disk and screen I/O. The board currently supports a C compiler and plans are under way for Fortran. Three OEM's are looking at Unix for workstations based on the 88100, within a 6 to 12 month time frame. A Unix port to their board would not be difficult as soon as someone does it once for the 88100 chip. Since the Lightspeed C and Pascal programming tools available for the Mac II are (in my opinion) superior to what I have seen in the Unix (or any other) programming environment, it would not be necessary to wait for the complete Unix workstation, but it is an important feature that it will be available later for those who wish to have a Unix environment. Our internal extensive C benchmark timing program ran on the board without modification. Times were 6 to 700 times faster than the MicroVax II, depending on the operation. For example, evaluation of a = b*c for type doubles was 10 microsecs on the MicroVax II and 0.016 microseconds on the 88100 or 600 times improvement. Evaluation of a = b+c was 9.77 microsecs on the MicroVax II and 0.016 microseconds on the 88100 or 84 times improvement. The MicroVax II is about equal in speed to the Mac II 68020 or Intel 80386 (IBM OS/2). In the coming year, Tektronix has a number of projects to provide further enhancements. Consideration has also been given to the TK88K-P board by Automatix for their AI-90 industrial vision computer based on the Mac II and so offers potential leverage if needed. 2. NuVista board. It has Texas Instruments TMS34010 Graphics System Processor (10 MIPS), which is C programmable from MPW, the Macintosh development system. With 4 Mbytes of on-board memory, it will be $5995, with October availability. TrueVision, 7251 Shadeland Station, Suite 100, Indianapolis, Indiana 46256. 317-841- 0332. Advantages: On-board digitizer and display device, so no communications bottlenecks. Low cost. Disadvantages: ease of programming? 3. Wytek chips. Mercury computer has announced a 3-chip set for the Mac II with a stated 20 MF peak performance, priced at $10,000. A C and Fortran compiler are announced. At $500 per MF this would be the best price-performance ratio of any computer that I am aware. Their implementation of the Wytek chip set somehow gives them greater performance (at least in their claims) than the Wyteks used in the Sun. Advantages: high performance/cost ratio, high absolute performance. Disadvantages: ease of programming? (We await awaiting further information from Mercury now). 4. NuVision. Perceptics Corp., P.O. Box 22991. Knoxville, TN 37933- 0991. 615-966-9200. This extremely impressive system has a complete additional box based on the Texas Instrument TMS320C25 Digital Signal Processor, with an interconnect to the Mac II which is used for user interaction. It offers a complete, ready-to-use, image- processing environment with all the major image processing routines for under $30,000. Its specs and price place it competition with other vision workstations (e.g. Videk) costing 5 times as much. It is rated low in our survey only because there is concern about ease of programmability of the DSP chip. Currently, the only development language available on the Macintosh for the TI SDP chip is an assembler. If the C compiler becomes available as Perceptics has indicated, this option would rapidly increase in priority. We have many additional routines we wish to implement, and so ease of programming is an important factor in our research environment. 5. Souped-up 68020. A 33 MHz replacement accelerator for Mac II - doubles Mac Speed by substituting a faster clock/CPU chip -- no other changes needed! Has a 32K RAM cache too. DayStar Digital, 5556 Atlanta Highway, Flowery Branch, GA 30542. Contact: Donna Smith, 404-967-2077. $3K to $6K, December, 1988. Advantages: low cost, NO additional programming required, ALL Mac applications are speeded up. Disadvantages: absolute speed-up of Mac II only by a factor of 2. 6. T800 Transputers. Levco Inc. 6160 Lusk Blvd., Suit C-100, San Diego, CA 92121. 619-457-2011. These offer 1.5 MF per transputer, with 1 megabyte of memory = $2400. Occam C runs on them, but development time would be increased because debugging tools are still limited. They are designed for parallel operation with easy expandability. A 20 transputer configuration in a Mac II was demonstrated at MacWorld, doing ray-tracing at about 1 second per 512 pixel line, which is about equal to Cray performance. Also MacBrain and Levco have teamed up to run their neural net software on the transputers. Linpack performance: 1 MFLOP/ transputer. Advantages: expandability to speed needed. Disadvantages: communications programming and debugging difficulties. 7. Apple 68030-based Mac II. Not announced yet, but according to published reports (MacWeek, Aug. 8. 1988, p. 9) it has a 16 MHz 68030 chip, with incorporated memory management; a 68882 math coprocessor; 4 MBytes of memory; an 80 MByte hard disk; and the first use of the 1.44-MByte floppy. It is expected to be priced at less than $9,000 and would be aimed particularly at UNIX users who require large memory and storage space. A 68030 upgrade board for existing Mac IIs is also expected to coincide with the release of the full 68030 machine. The board is thought to yield only a disappointing 10- 20% speed improvement over the 68020, due to a data caching facility. Not a viable option. Other Options. A completely different option is to purchase a 80386-based box and add in a Mercury array processor which uses the Multibus, but this would not offer ease of programming and reliability of the Mercury array processor is uncertain. Another possibility is to add special purpose hardware plug-in card to the to do a single vision application for factory application. This would offer speed and low cost after development but not generality and adaptability. Other Products Seen at MacWorld Convention Digitizers. At least five companies are offering video digitizer boards for the Mac II. The only one without flicker of the text and full 8-bit capability on R, G, and B and overlay was the NuVista board (see option 2 above) by TrueVision (an offshoot of AT&T). It has full gen-lock capability, and four 8-bit flash a/d converters on input and four on output. TrueVision also sells their VID I/O box which also conversion of Analog RGB to NTSC for recording purposes ($750). Image Processing. Digital Darkroom from Graphics Software ($395) had an interesting and at times amazing set of capabilities to virtually duplicate all the common darkroom capabilities. For example, a picture with a blank sky was brought in, the sky (which was in multiple pieces, interrupted by trees) was segmented by automatic grey level, a picture of clouds was brought in, and pasted only in that grey level -- so clouds were added to the sky, in a few seconds. Scanners. Apple announced its new scanner. It is only 4 bits (16 gray levels). Several nice software interfaces including one to Hypercard were available. A new low-cost 300 d.p.i. R,G,B full 8 bit on each channel scanner was announced by Sharp (JX-450 and JX-300, Sharp Plaza, Mahwah, N.J. 06430-2135, 201-529-8200). Its picture quality is excellent. Neural Networks. Neural network products now available for the Mac II include The Cognitron ($600, Cognitive Software), MacBrain 1.2 (Neuronics), with NX parallel processors ($4150, Human Devices, based on Levco transputers). CAD. Swivel3D from Paracomp was a real show-stopper. It has "tweening" commands that interpolate in time between two views to create animation sequences, and allows any of its parts to move with separate motion paths for individual objects. Five rendering modes are available. These CAD products offer fast development and easy conceptualization but their performance is not yet up to full CAD development stations. A number of vendors are offering interface and file conversion from and to larger workstation CAD systems. The Fall 1988 Mac Buyers guide compares 10 CAD packages for the Mac II. Color Printing. At least six companies now offer color printers, including Tektronix, Seiko, Sharp, GCC Technologies, and QMS. Avalon Development Corp. announced a $695 color separation package that converts RGB to a color-corrected CYMB system for color printing, a process previously requiring color separation hardware costing $100K or more. Disk Drives. CDC is offering 300-MByte and 600-MByte Wren V disk drive. Program Development Tools. MPW 3.0 is making strong efforts to attract the Unix base of programmers. C++ from AT&T will be part of the next release, and all the Apple object libraries in MacApp will be fully accessible from C++. APDA the Apple Programmers Development Association is selling t-shirts with the object definition of a programmer: TProgrammer = OBJECT(THuman) fNeedsCaffeine : BOOLEAN; fReadsThings : BOOLEAN; fKeepsOddHours : BOOLEAN; fHasPocketProctector : BOOLEAN; FUNCTION TProgrammer.Eat( Junk : Food): SIZE; OVERRIDE; FUNCTION TProgrammer.DealWithHumans; OVERRIDE; FUNCTION TProgrammer.CollectTechnoJunk; END; 3278 and 3279 Terminal Emulation. Avatar technologies, Inc. offers hardware/software communications products that work in conjunction with Avatar's standard Host File Transfer software on IBM (CICS, CMS, or TSO formats, $500) to transfer text files between the Mac and IBM host network. If we already have IND$FILE file transfer module then this $500 purchase is not necessary. Also only 1 copy of the IBM software is needed per mainframe. MacMainFrame II ($995) software and hardware (this hardware card has the Type A coax cable connector for the IBM right out the back of the card) package connects the Macintosh II directly to an IBM 3270 network and allows 3278/9 emulation with powerful file transfer capabilities and user-selectable color support on the Macintosh. In other words, you can remove the 3279 terminal off your desk ($1500) and use their MacMainFrame II and "put a mainframe in your Macintosh. " You can also do file transfer from the IBM, and use the powerful Macintosh editing commands to insert directly into your application, which you cannot do with the 3279 itself. MacMainFrame DX ($1195) is an external hardware box and software package that provides local or remote connection of any Macintosh to a 3270 network. This is needed only if we need remote connectivity and if we do not already have a cluster controller, which we have already at GMR, so MacMainFrame DX would not be necessary -- only MacMainFrame II ($995) . Avatar Technologies, 99 South St., Hopkinton, MA 01748. 617-435-6872. On one side of their house they have a series of boards which uses protocol converters to do printing. However, this is a completely different side of their business which specializes in Macintosh and IBM connectivity. DCA (Digital Communications Associates, 100 Alderman Drive, Alpharetta, GA 30201, 404-442-4000, Version 1.1, $1195) also has a product called MacIrma that is a competitor. The important difference is that Avatar has had the DX Product for three years, and they feel that their product is more developed and more Mac-like in its interface. Also they have an API or Applications Programmer Interface, so the application can be customized on the Mac side, and the API will also support the Mac WorkStation product, a set of programming tools from Apple which allows direct access to the host IBM machine. Also available is the MacBlue/3270 IBM 3278 emulator ($95) from Wall Data, Inc. which requires their Wall Data protocol converter (6 ports, $3995, 10 ports, $4995, 18 ports $5995). Wall Data, Inc. 17769 NE 78th Pl., Redmond WA 98052. 206-883-4777. Vax Connectivity The Alisa and Pacer products were reviewed. The Pacer products seem to have more functionality. The Alisa products allow the Vax to print over the Laserwriter connected to AppleNet. The Pacer products keep the print server on the Vax and allow you to hang your Laserwriters off the Vax. The Pacer Products have a built in terminal products allowing multiple terminals to be open at once. It seems to offer more features than the VaxStation II even. DEC is reportedly considering purchasing the Pacer software solutions for its own system, according to a recent article in MacWeek: "Sources close to Digital Equipment Company say the computer giant, Apple's strategic ally in the mini and main-frame computer world, is close to acquiring licensing rights to the networking software line of Pacer Software, Inc. a leading Mac-to-Vax company." Also, "PacerShare is considered by DEC developers as the premier software package for converting a VAX into a file server on an AppleTalk network. PacerLink provides communications between a Mac or IBM PC and host computers, including DEC VAX/VMS, Stratus, and most UNIX systems. PacerPrints is a VMS service for PostScript printers." In my own viewing of both Alisa and Pacer products, the Pacer products seemed to have more functionality, although the price was somewhat higher. A complete Pacer system is about $5K, including virtual disk ability. This is an excellent idea as full MAC backups can then be done to the Vax over Ethernet. Pacer Software, 619-454-0565. Other Kodak offers a liquid-crystal Projection Pad for use with Mac+ computers for about $1500. It sits on top of an overhead projector and shows excellent high-contrast images of the Mac screen as large as the viewing area of the overhead projector. The image may not be polarized, so this would unfortunately not be suitable for our application. Further investigation of such projection pads from other companies will be done, but unfortunately the Kodak one is reportedly the only one that gives black-white, which we also need. Future Directions CD-ROM drives will prove to be a major means of storing and displaying information. A new form of "home entertainment center" based on interactive computer-controlled CD-ROM video may well be the next major consumer product to be widely accepted in the home (potential market = 98 million homes with TV, much larger than the potential market for home computers, which is only 2-3 million), particularly as prices of CD-ROM drives fall below $1,000 in the coming 2-3 years. Videoworks Professional ($695, MacroMind) promises to be the premier animation program for the Mac II. It allows specification of multiple knot-points in time, with selection of the type of curve to draw in time (linear, spline, etc.) to connect the views in space. It will ship in October. Other Info Corporate Macs: Kodak now has about 65,000 Macintoshes (all sites); GE about 6,000; Hughes about 1,800 (33% of all PC's); EDS in Southfield,380 (92% of all PC's!). University of Michigan topped single-site list at 6,000 Macs (50% of all PC's). On the low end, IBM has 4 Macs. Note: All the comments in this posting reflect my personal view and do not necessarily reflect the views of GM. Also I have no commercial interest or holding in any of these products or companies. --- end of MacWorld Expo review ---- ------------------------------ Date: 19 May 88 14:32:15 GMT From: moriarty@tc.fluke.com (Jeff Meyer) Subject: Sound Leech 0.80 (3 parts) This is the Sound Leech Utility, which extracts sound resources from programs and changes them into SoundWave files. Documentation included. "If God had really intended men to fly, He'd have made it easier to get to the airport." -- George Winters Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind... <*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone!