[Info-vax] Linux support

[David Froble]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <lcjfn9$kcu$1 at dont-email.me>,
> 	David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>>
>> Speculation.
>>
>> If everything had happened at once, desktops, notebooks, tablets, and 
>> smart phones, might CPUs such as Alpha have had a better chance?  There 
>> might not have been the all invasive x86 to bury most others in it's 
>> economies of scale.  The 2 things that made x86 was that it was used 
>> everywhere, and AMD's 64 bit extensions.  Perhaps x86 might not have 
>> been able to bury Alpha and Power and such because it would not have had 
>> the huge numbers.  Keep in mind, Intel and AMD have spent big bucks to 
>> wring performance out of the architechure.  Without cheap x86, the 
>> customers who still needed the "mainframes" (for lack of a better label) 
>> would have continued to pay more, and the development would have 
>> continued to be feasible.
>>
>> /Speculation
> 
> But that falls back, once again, on the idea that a technically
> superior chip could have won that battle.

I'll say that all else being equal, the technically superior chip will 
win the battles.  But things were very unequal.

>  It was never about
> technical superiority.  People here have often said "it's the 
> applications" and that is the crux of the matter.

It's always about the applications.  If the applications are equal ???

> Probably the
> biggest factor in the demise of Alpha was Microsoft dropping
> support for it.

I don't buy that, because I've always felt that VMS's strength was not 
on the desktop.

>  Isn't it curious that after talk of "burning
> boats" and "there will be no future ports, Itanium is it"
> speeches Itanium's demise and with it all the systems that
> relied on it came so soon after Microsoft dropped support?

Not at all.  What deep sixed the itanic was AMD-64.  No question about 
it.  Intel was all set to be the sole supplier of server type CPUs. 
They refused to embrace 64 bit x86, even after AMD introduced it, until 
they saw the market moving massively to AMD.

And if that had happened, you'd have seen even less innovation than 
actually happened, if Intel had cornered the market.

The itanic is sinking for the same reason Alpha died.  Lack of enough 
volume to keep prices down.  And that happened because the market was 
dominated by 64 bit x86.

> Another interesting point is the claim by Microsoft that they
> were not going to support another 64bit architecture when they
> did that and yet they now support Arm as well as x86.  See
> where this is going?

Yeah, Microsoft is losing weight, no longer an 800 pound gorilla.

> Oh, and you made the comment that "Intel and Microsoft are
> rather sleezy operations ....", well, that has been the fact
> since IBM bailed out Intel to make processors for their new-
> fangled thing called the IBM PC.  Funny how they cose the
> two companies with the least amount of ethics.  But, with the
> power and money of IBM behind you at that point in IT history,
> how could they do anything but thrive.
> 
> bill
> 

I seem to remember when the 386 had a FP problem, and Intel tried to 
deny it, and then tried to say "so what".  That's sleezy ...