A new paradigm?

[zip accident]

I'm thinking that the ST and the Amiga were basically fast enough, but they were rubbish graphicslly compared to what we have now.

So why not a single processor to run the OS with all the security and power, another (faster?) processor to run applications (games) without much security or control outside the applications, and another subsystem to run the graphics with lots of memory and power, and access to load in graphics resources but no access to the central controls?

This clearly isn't the Von Neumann architecture, but it seems to me it could work better than that for games at the very least.

[Little stoned kiwi]

So a processor, virtual address spacing, and a GPU?

[zip accident]

So a processor, virtual address spacing, and a GPU?

What I'm thinking is that the CPU doesn't need to address the GPU's address space, that can be totally outside the CPUs address space. the GPU'S address space can be loaded by the GPU without the CPU knowing anything about it. I don't see anything virtual about it, but that could easily be me not seeing it.

As I remember things, with a Von Neumann architecture everything goes through the CPU.

Probably everyone's been doing it this was for decades and it's nothing new.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Everything doesn't have to go *through* the CPU, but it does need to be delegated and coordinated by it. That's what makes it the Central Processing Unit.

[venusian]

Amstrads MegaPC anybody?

Less glibly, security and performance are at odds every time. Every nearly partitioned secure system is undone to increase raw throughput. Every blazingly fast supercomputer is open to exploit.

Unchecked buffers, speculative execution, uncleared memory blocks, container escapes... It's always like that for performance.

[NorthWay]

Somehow I was reminded of a fabled 90s 3D-card from Finland(?) that IIRC never surfaced, but it had separate memory for everything to bump total bandwidth. The company was possible called Bitboys?

[Dio]

So why not a single processor to run the OS with all the security and power, another (faster?) processor to run applications (games) without much security or control outside the applications, and another subsystem to run the graphics with lots of memory and power, and access to load in graphics resources but no access to the central controls?

Idle silicon is wasted money unless it's rubbish.

That said, every modern CPU and GPU contains multiple processors, several of which handle security.