So at what point does something become special purpose? Is L1, L2 or L3 cache special purpose? What about io chips? What about the firmware inside ethernet cards, harddrives or the video chips (not even talking about GPUs).
I'm not trying to be combatitive, but it seems completely arbitrary where one would draw a line and taken to the extreme one is essentially left with a CPU and possibly some RAM that might be some ideal computing machine, but can't even talk to the outside world.
I'm not trying to be combatitive, but it seems completely arbitrary where one would draw a line and taken to the extreme one is essentially left with a CPU and possibly some RAM that might be some ideal computing machine, but can't even talk to the outside world.