3DS&Pentium
The cost of the unit is around $12k. The cost of development depends
on how the thing is done. I don't know 3DS code (that well) and I
would be just "gussing". I would assume the stuff is laid out in
fairly separate modules and some of them (the ones we care) would be
ported to the i860 rather easily. There are, however, too many
variables involved. For instance, the relationship between PharLap's
DOS extender and that thing. Topas uses Intel's Code Builder (as
opposed to PharLap) and it handle these things in a different manner.
All assembly code (if any) would have to be ported at a high cost
(all C code should be able to be ported rather easily). If they plan
on porting 3DS to anything (NT for instance) most of these issues are
going to be dealt with any way. For something like NT, the main
problem (I would think) would be the user interface. That would have
to be re-written from scratch. For parallel systems like the
quadputer, the UI stays untouched as it will be running using the
host CPU (the 486 in this case) without any change. This is a fun
project just to think about it…
Gary is the guy to answer that question but then, we get stuck in the
"non disclosure" of anything Autodesk might or might not do!