[geeks] just to stir things up, a few predictions

[Dave Fischer]

lefa at ucsc.edu writes:

>On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:04:28 -0400
>  Dave Fischer <dave at cca.org> wrote:

>> i860 was great at what it was originally designed for -
>> a dedicated math processor for graphics cards and such.
>> (Painfully, certainly, but still great.)

>Not really, the 80860 was designed as a general purpose 
>CPU, in fact it was supposed to be the "death knell" for 
>the x86 according to intel... basically the 486 was to be 
>the last x86 interation and then everyone was moving to 
>the 80860, 801860, etc... Since no one could get anywhere 
>the estimated performance from the compilers, then people 
>realized that the machine had a pretty nice integrated 3D 
>HW and used it as a gfx and copro machine. There were 
>vendors who provided hybrid systems with 486 and 860 on 
>board to help in the transition.

Everything I've seen about the history of the i860 suggests
that the original design was as a high-end embedded math
processor, and only when they started selling did someone in
marketing decide to push it as a general purpose processor.

>I believe that Motorola planned their own move with the 
>68000 -> 880000, and Intel did the same with their 8086 -> 
>80860. None of which was sucessful at al...

I think Motorola expected Sun to jump on when they started
the 88000, but it took so long to finish, Sun was already
shipping SPARCs by the time it was ready.

>Every now and then we seem to have a 860 related thread in 
>this list.

Yeah - it's an interested and famous dead architecture. I
expect i432, Symbolics, PDP10, & Multiflow threads pop up now 
and then as well..

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org ------
------ When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a snail. ------