[rescue] SGI, MIPS, and IA-64

[Dave McGuire]

On February 14, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> > Hopefully the IA-64 will go the way of the i860......
> 
> What do you mean by that?  I thought that the i860 was supposed to be good,
> and I know that SGI used a lot of them.

  The i860 is an amazing processor, but I believe the point was that it
failed to enter the mainstream market.

  The i860 was widely used as a high-speed embedded processor for many
applications, not the least of which are the SGI Reality Engine (eight
i860s for geometric stuff) and Reality Engine 2 (twelve i860s).  It
failed as a mainstream processor, however, primarily because it is
very difficult to program with any degree of efficiency.

      -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL         "Less talk.  More synthohol." --Lt. Worf