FPU’s and Root Beer Floats
Back when I was in college, I remember a friend who had a new Intel 486SX processor. Now the key part of that model is the “SX” which indicated that Intel’s new floating point unit (FPU) wasn’t "built-in" to it. An FPU as far as I know, helps in doing calculations of non-integer numbers so you get better overall performance, especially for things like graphics or anything else that requires heavy float processing. There were two chips originally, the DX and the SX. The DX had the FPU built-in already, and cost a noticeable amount more. I remember cracking open the case on my friends computer and seeing the SX processor in there, with an empty socket next to it, that looked like it would fit a similar sized chip right next to it. "That is where," my friend explained, "you could buy the FPU to speed things up." The FPU was called the 487DX. I hadn’t really thought through the manufacturing implications of this, and what complexity it would create. I just remember thinking that you might lose out on some of the speed because things would somehow have to be sent out to that FPU to be processed and then sent back. Well, it seems that there was no magic going on with these FPUs that Intel made, and in fact they were just 486DX chips that essentially disabled the 486SX chip, and ran as the main processor. To top it off, the SX chip actually had the FPU already on it, but Intel disabled it in the fabrication process: slashdot comment. You could actually remove the 486SX processor from the motherboard once you installed a 487DX and it would still work fine (if I would have known that back then I would have bought an empty SX motherboard and just bought the 487DX as it was cheaper, if I remember correctly by a substantial amount, than the 486DX, which was identical). I guess I don’t consider that earth shattering news, it was apparently well known back then (except to at least a few ignorant college kids in Gresham, OR).
Last week I went with Cecilia to A&W to get a root beer float. I enjoy their root beer, and with ice cream it is just great. I thought it prudent to get the smallest sized floats, because I wasn’t feeling like I needed anymore sugar, and Celia probably didn’t need that much either. When I ordered the floats the lady informed me that they were running a special that day and it was actually cheaper to buy a medium sized float (99 cents) than it was to buy a small size (a buck and some change). My internal greediness kicked in at that point and almost as a knee jerk reaction I said, "ok, we’ll take two mediums then." All fine and dandy, we get more for less. The problem came when we got about halfway through the floats. It became apparent that neither of us had the stomachs to finish them off. Now we have a waste. Not a big deal on the scale of two people and two floats, but it seems like it is an archetype for what happens very commonly in the US, as well as what Intel did/does with their chips.
Don’t know what it means, good or bad, but it seems like there are some implications to living in that sort of reality.