[rescue] sparc10 cpu - what to do.

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
" 
" On 12/16/2016 02:31 PM, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
" > My personal opinion: what helped to kill SPARC was interpreted
" > languages like Perl, where the code to be executed was far larger than
" > could fit in cache.
" > 
" > When running a compiled program, the smaller caches of SPARC didn't
" > matter as much. But with Perl, Python etc. having such a large
" > footprint, the x86 CPUs with more L2 cache gained an advantage.
" > 
" > Not sure if anyone agrees with that? It is my naive, non-OS-developer viewpoint.
" 
"   I'm not sure I can agree with that.  First, most SPARCs had much
" larger caches than x86 implementations of the same era.  Second, there
" wasn't much that higher-end SPARCs couldn't do faster than higher-end
" x86 implementations.  There were the crappy SPARCs, like the IIi and
" IIe, but they don't count in my book. ;)
" 
"   What really helped to kill SPARCs, assuming they've actually been
" killed (I've seen no formal announcement of their discontinuance), is
" PeeCee fanboys.

the triumph of the marketplace -- best doesn't win; popular wins.  and
popular affects scale, which drives price, and price is an easy sell.
quality - however you measure it - is more nebulous.

pa-risc is gone.  alpha is gone.  mips is radically retargeted.  if
sparc goes, power may be the only alternative performance chip left.
itanium?  i was at hp when the first gen was launching [disastrously]
and i understand why hp threw in with intel, but i predicted then that
intel would eat hp's lunch, and it seems to be coming to pass.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought