Bus No Bottleneck

May 1 997 / Inbox / Bus No Bottleneck

In "The Mac Goes Multiprocessor" (February Core CPU), Tom Thompson mentions how the system bus limits use of processor capacity. How much of that capacity can the sys tem bus handle? How do you determine the maximum capacity of your own system bus?
Steve Gold
goldie@earthlink.net

System 7.6's System Profiler application will indicate the system bus clock rate. And yes, the bus imposes a bandwidth limitation, which I alluded to. In terms of system cost, it's going to be cheaper to add a second processor that can grab its share of the bus while the first processor is busy, rather than add a higher-speed bus. Put another way, the second processor helps utilize the existing bus's capacity. -- Tom Thompson, senior technical editor

Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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