[Info-vax] Dvorak on Itanic

[DaveG]

On Jan 28, 4:10 pm, c... at wvnvms.wvnet.edu (George Cook) wrote:
> In article <op.uohb97imhv4... at murphus.hsd1.ca.comcast.net>, "Tom Linden" <t... at kednos.company> writes:
> > On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:10:04 -0800, David Mathog <mat... 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- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Maybe the Alpha CPU architects bought into this as part of their
"salary continuation program".  Stranger things do happen.  Just a
wild random thought.