
HSA Foundation - protomyth
http://hsafoundation.com/
======
dmm
Thus the great Wheel of Reincarnation turns.

wheel of reincarnation

[coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On the Design of Display
Processors, Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] Term used to refer to a
well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated
out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral
evolves toward more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices
that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the
architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at which point the
cycle begins again.

Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor
design, and at least one or two in communications and floating-point
processors. Also known as the Wheel of Life, the Wheel of Samsara, and other
variations of the basic Hindu/Buddhist theological idea.

[http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-
reincarnation.ht...](http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/W/wheel-of-
reincarnation.html)

