Craig Lalley wrote:


> I know that the 979 has 180Mhz CPU's and the 989KS has 240 Mhz CPU's.
>
> But my question, is the backplane any faster on the 989, if so, how much
> faster, and would there be any improvement in I/O?

I do not know the bus-speeds (and if there are differences then
certainly the 989-x50's will have the faster bus :-), but just by
having 33% faster CPUs your IOs will happen a bit faster (until
you reach IO bandwidth of busses, cards, or devices) .

There is a certain amount of CPU instructions necessary to setup
any IO, and to handle the completion once a HW interrupt signals
that the DMA is done. So setup and completion (as well as process
notification, sleep and wakeup) will happen faster.

But if your bus only comes down your street twice per hour,
then running the normally 5 minutes-walking distance does
not make a lot of difference in overall travel time; you
will have to wait longer and might need to steam off more
heat :-)

HTH,
Goetz.

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