[Info-vax] Dvorak on Itanic

[George Cook]

In article <op.uohb97imhv4qyg at murphus.hsd1.ca.comcast.net>, "Tom Linden" <tom at kednos.company> writes:
> On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:10:04 -0800, David Mathog <mathog at caltech.edu>  
> wrote:
> 
>> Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>>> John Smith (not the one @ HP) wrote:
>>>> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp
>>
>>> Itanic toes seem to have been "sailing under a curse".
>>
>> Well, in terms of actually getting out the door and working as promised,  
>>   sure.  But in one sense it was immensely blessed.  Throughout all of  
>> this nonsense, where all the computer manufacturers were not only  
>> talking about deemphasizing their own CPUs, but in some cases (MIPS,  
>> Alpha) actually doing so, and pinning future development on Intel's  
>> great white hope, there was no anti-trust action whatsoever.  Not even a  
>> hint of it.  Were not there actions more than a little anticompetitive?  
>> To me it seems analogous to the hypothetical situation where Lexmark,  
>> Canon, and HP, announce that henceforth all of their printers would only  
>> use Epson print cartridges.
>>
>> The only company that didn't buy into this nonsense was AMD.  Now that  
>> may have been because Intel wouldn't let them in on the party, but in  
>> any case, they had to respond, and eventually pushed the Opteron out the  
>> door, thereby showing everybody just how naked the Emperor really was.  
>> The rest is history.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> David Mathog
>>
> 
> IIRC this started as an HP poject.  One of Jack Davidson's grad students  
> got
> hired by HP ca. 1992 to work on the VLIW arch, and don't forget that a  
> couple

Well, that explains a lot.  Having once been a grad student, I can
understand how one fresh out of grad school with no real world
experience could have come up with such an unworkable grandiose pie
in the sky idea based on nothing but theory.  I had always assumed
it was dreamed up by some extremely incompetent electronics engineers.

> of years ago HP committed to putting in another $3B to the Intel effort,  
> so in
> some ways I think Intel got suckered, although the $3B would mitigate the  
> pain.

Suckered?  Maybe, but I suspect Intel also used grad students and
incompetent engineers who agreed that it was the "end all be all"
of CPU architectures.

The part I still don't understand is how the otherwise apparently
very competent Alpha CPU architects bought into it.  Must have been
the same type of irrational group think that got us into the current
economic mess.  Unfortunately there are few people who are able to
avoid the trap of "group think", Steve Jobs being one example, which
is why he is so critical to Apple's continued success.


George Cook