Re: The Death of x86 Arch. ?

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Article #18925

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#18925

From: Piercarlo Grandi
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1993 19:27

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On 30 Dec 92 06:41:35 GMT, aland@informix.com (Colonel Panic) said:

aland> If you're saying that NT on Alpha will be running as an x86
aland> emulator, then 1) that surprises me, and 2) I would then dispute
aland> the "10x the computing power" figure quoted by Mr. Kamm.

NT will definitely have a full x86 emulator, in sw for those
architectures (MIPS, Alpha) that are not already x86. Just like the
PowerPC OS, which will also have a full 68000 emulator to run MacIntosh
sw in.

aland> Plus, I think you're seriously underestimating the number of DOS
aland> apps that directly access hardware.

No problem, the NT and PowerPC sw emulators emulate not DOS but a whole
x86 machine, down to the last bit of hw. This is how SoftPC works today
on Macs, Sparc and RS/6000 machines.

aland> Also, any of *those* applications should run just fine in
aland> DOS-under-UNIX implementations *today*.  So, what exactly is the
aland> NT advantage?

Source, rather then binary, compatibility with Windows 3.1; sw houses
can "just recompile" an application, if it was written to the WIN32 API,
and "almost as easily" if it was written to the WIN16 API.
--
Piercarlo Grandi, Dept of CS, PC/UW@Aberystwyth <pcg@aber.ac.uk>
  E l'italiano cantava, cantava. E le sue disperate invocazioni giunsero
  alle orecchie del suo divino protettore, il dio della barzelletta

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<1gqsv5INNiel@hpscit.sc.hp.com> <1992Dec29.234248.28259@informix.com> <1992Dec30.032305.21871@netcom.com> <1992Dec30.064135.8443@informix.com>

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!pipex!bnr.co.uk!uknet!gdt!aber!fronta.aber.ac.uk!pcg
From: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: The Death of x86 Arch. ?
Message-ID: <PCG.93Jan5192712@decb.aber.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Jan 93 19:27:12 GMT
References: <1gqsv5INNiel@hpscit.sc.hp.com> <1992Dec29.234248.28259@informix.com>
 <1992Dec30.032305.21871@netcom.com>
 <1992Dec30.064135.8443@informix.com>
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Reply-To: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Organization: Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth
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In-Reply-To: aland@informix.com's message of 30 Dec 92 06: 41:35 GMT
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