SMD-4 vs. 7053

[Jiri Dvorak]

Many thanks to all who sent a response to my question on the differences
between the new Sun controller SMD-4 and the xy7053. The most detailed
response I got from 

>  Brian Wong - TSE Sun Washington DC <bwong at sun.com>

>  The SMD-4 is similar to the Xylogics 753; however it has radically different
>  proms which cause significantly different caching behaviour.  The (silicon)
>  logic is reasonably close.  The difference is that the 753 just takes huge
>  blocks and pre-reads, while the SMD-4 actually utilizes a demand-replacement
>  algorithm.  Performance is notably different for some kinds of applications
>  (like servers for diskless clients).

The hardware and software requirements for a SMD-4 were already discussed
in earlier issues of sun-spots.

regards,
Jiri Dvorak                  dvorak at iam.unibe.ch   or
University of Berne          dvorak%iam.unibe.ch at relay.cs.net
Switzerland