wheel of reincarnation
(jargon) | 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. See also {
blitter}.
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