[Info-vax] "x86 has only a few years left in the market place"

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Dave
> Froble via Info-vax
> Sent: May 16, 2018 3:34 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] "x86 has only a few years left in the market
place"
> 
> On 5/12/2018 9:35 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> > =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> >> On 5/12/2018 9:15 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> >>> seasoned_geek  <roland at logikalsolutions.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 11:27:18 AM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman
> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Nobody likes x86-64.  Not even the folks at Intel, judging by
the
> >>>>> number of times they've tried to replace it.
> >>>>
> >>>> INTEL doesn't have the skills to replace it. That would be why
they
> were caught red handed stealing Alpha tech.
> >>>
> >>> Intel keeps coming out with better architectures... maybe not the
> iAPX 432,
> >>> but the 8096, i860 and i960 were definitely huge steps ahead of
the
> x86
> >>> architecturally and, at the time they were introduced, in
> performance.  But
> >>> Intel couldn't sell them.
> >>
> >> And then a company called HP convinced them to go with a thing
> >> called Itanium (or what later got the name Itanium) and we
> >> know the end of that story now!
> >
> > No, you can't blame HP for that, it was very much an idea that came
> > from Intel in-house.  SGI was on the line long before HP was.
> 
> Oh, yes, it was HP who came up with the idea, and I'm not sure why
Intel
> jumped on the idea.  Probably the concept of dominating the market
> with
> no competition.  But it started with HP.
> 

>From what I recall, the big driver for Intel was to establish a brand
new high end architecture to replace X86 which, not coincidentally,
would have a much tighter license model.

Hence, once established as the clear follow-on to X86-32, Intel
competitors like AMD would have to pay Intel much bigger $'s to license
and/or build on to the IA64 core architecture. 

Hard to argue from a business perspective. However, the actual
implementation as the clear follow-on to X86 failed due to many years of
IA64 delays. This gave time for X86-64 to emerge (with some help from
the Alpha developers who ended up with competitors) as the defacto
standard to replace X86-32.

As the saying goes, "the rest is history".

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com