Colour Graphics and te Fifth Generation Workstation

Abstract

If we accept the above idiosyncratic views, what kind of architecture will the fifth generation machine offer to graphics users? We would hope to see high quality colour raster graphics, tightly coupled to a sophisticated processor but in its own address space. It should allow for pictures much larger than the screen and also at higher resolution. The local disk must be organized to handle the large amounts of data which picture manipulation on this scale calls for. Disk and main memory must have support for manipulation of two dimensional arrays of pixel data and the filing system and its utilities must reflect this. Response is more important than ever.The software to be built on to this hardware is still a matter for conjecture and depends on whether a particular combination of hardware and language family can be packaged to give clear performance advantages. However a real-time style operating system is essential.Timescales for suitable architectures seem quite short, around two or three years, with software developing beyond that. Certainly such a machine will contain far more graphical software in the operating system than any before and ought to satisfy a wide range of raster graphics applications.