Mac IIfx: the fastest micro that can be found today

1990/07/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Hardwarea

Although it looks the same as Mac II and Mac IIx, it is the fastest micro that can be found today. It has Motorola 68030 processor and mathematical coprocessor 68882 and works at 40 MHz.

However, speed is not only due to higher CPU clock speed. There are also other technological advances integrated in the design. These advances can be classified into three areas:

Process and memorial area

In addition to two processors working at 40 MHz, it has a fast speed cache of 32Kb. This allows the processor to work with little waiting time, without the need to use special memories that would make the product much more expensive.

On the other hand, the latched-write technique allows you to write the processors in memory while reading from the RAM cache, speeding up the process.

Input/output area

Macintosh IIfx features two new input/output processors. These will be responsible for data transfers, downloading this work to the central processor.

Demonstration area

In this third area new boards have also been presented, the most important being the 8/24 bit card that can accelerate the response speed of the system between 5 and 30 times.

This equipment is designed for those who require a high processing capacity: network servers and people dedicated to image processing, animation and complex job design.

Two different versions of this new machine are presented: 4 Mb RAM and 80 or 160 Mb disk. These two versions are expected to be on the street by June and along with the computer will be offered version 6.05 of the system.