Gigglebytes - When the Chips are Down

Revolutionary new CPU makes your computer obsolete
Originally printed in Computer Currents March 4, 1997

With the release of systems running on Knowtel’s new Tedium/M&M processor, the computer industry is going through its biggest revolutionary upheaval this week. The fuel of this revolution is the new M&M instruction set, which allows computers to display icons onscreen at rates of up to three times those possible with a 486.

How does Knowtel see the future of the M&M instruction set and the Tedium/M&M processor? To find out, we spoke to Knowtel Vice President in Charge of Deconstruction Clayton Forester.

Lincoln Spector: What exactly is so revolutionary about the Tedium/M&M?

Clayton Forester: There are a number of exciting and amazing technologies that went into the Tedium/M&M. For instance, the wafer is made entirely out of silicon, a process that was completely unheard of only fifty years ago.

That’s wonderful. Is there anything that hasn’t been in previous chips.

Yes; floating-point math support. It wasn’t built into CPUs until 1991.

How about features that weren’t in the Tedium or the Tedium Tro?

I’m glad you asked me that. The most important new feature in the Tedium/M&M is support for Knowtel’s M&M instruction set, which speeds up the task to displaying icons onscreen.

How exactly does M&M work?

Simple. In ancient times, computers had to display icons in the most primitive of ways. For instance, to display an icon of Godzilla ravaging Tokyo (which could mean "Install the application suite), your software would have to painstakingly give color values to the video driver one pixel at a time. An M&M-aware application, on the other hand, speaking to an M&M-capable chip, will simply issue the command "DisplayIcon," and up would come the icon of Godzilla ravaging Tokyo.

But doesn’t the software still have to describe the indiviual pixels to the M&M chip?

No. All the chips come with the image of Godzilla ravaging Tokyo.

What if you want to show an icon of something else ravaging Tokyo?

Can I get back to you on that?

Uh, sure. The true advantages of M&M technology are only apparent when you use M&M-specific software. What sort of commitment do you have from software vendors to make such programs?

There’s a huge amount of interest in M&M technology throughout the software industry. At this point, we’re contractually obliged not to name our major collaborators, but Microsoft, IBM, and Corel are among the companies that might be considering something or other.

Any companies you can specifically name?

A few. Furd Vaporware is working on an M&M version of their Cattle Futures database, and the MicroBran Computing and Floor Wax Company hopes to be the first out with an M&M-capable budgeting program for federal prisons.

Tests we’ve run with beta versions of these programs show a phenomenal increase in performance thanks to M&M technology. For instance, when we ran the M&M version of Furd Cattle Futures on an Tedium/M&M computer, the program displayed a window containing 50 icons in less than half a second. When we ran the same software on a standard Tedium, the program took over three quarters of a second to fully realize that the CPU didn’t support M&M and freeze Windows.

What sort of advantages does the Tedium/M&M have over the standard Tedium when you’re running non-M&M applications?

The Tedium/M&M has a new, totally reworked cache. When the cache passes an instruction to the CPU, it then goes out and grabs the instruction which it thinks is most likely to be used next. If the cache guesses incorrectly, it stuffs the instruction into the CPU anyway as an object lesson. On the other hand, if it guesses correctly, it assumes an error has been made and discards that instruction before making another guess. We’re calling it Cache 22.

Is there any future for non-M&M Tediums?

Knowtel is committed to manufacturing and shipping Tedium microprocessors as long as there is demand. To that end, we have demanded that system manufacturers stop asking us for them.

Knowtel is licensing M&M technology to its competitors. Can you explain how that will work?

As you know, AMA and Teeryx have been making illegal clones of our CPUs for several years now …

Actually, the courts ruled that their clones are legal.

That’s only because the companies haven’t broken any laws. Anyway, to make M&M ubiquitous, we have licensed the M&M name to AMA and Teeryx, so long as they don’t use any of our code.

So how compatible with the clone chips be to the actual M&M standard?

That depends totally on the abilities of AMA’s and Teeryx’s engineers. If they do their job right, and can figure out all the little things we’re hiding from them, they should be able to make M&M chips that are every bit as compatible as our own. That is, they should be able to act in a reliable manner at least 50 percent of the time.

One last question: How truly committed is Knowtel’s corporate management to M&M?

When you talk about Knowtel’s corporate management, committed is absolutely the word to use.