🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <TMH.92Aug26230950@doppel.first.gmd.de> tmh@doppel.first.gmd.de (Thomas Hoberg) writes:
>In article <BtLGIG.3q2@pgroup.com> I write:
>   Actually, the announcement was that Intel had admitted the failure of
>   the i860 as a general-purpose CPU.  They still intend to support it in
>   graphics and embedded applications; speculation is that they will also
>   support it for the iPSC MPP systems.  No followon has been announced,
>   but one would obviously be needed if they do indeed plan to continue to
>   use i860-like chips in the iPSC.
>
>Why did it fail, though? While there might be better CPUs today, I
>thought it pretty good when it came out. Was there anything seriously
>wrong with it (except that it'd do virtual caching)? Was it just that
>the various vendors were too busy promoting their own designs or
>tuning their old architectures? Is it just bad luck that nobody
>decided to pick it up or is there something about the i860 that I
>missed?

Well, I could probably go on all day, and Intel may shoot me, but...

It is my personal opinion that Intel's failure to properly market and
position the i860 resulted in its lack of mainstream acceptance.  Intel
started out marketing the i860 as the workstation chip, then switched
to the graphics chip, then to the supercomputing chip, even before
vendors such as OKI had shipped any non-beta workstations.

As for why Intel did this, it seems clear that they decided that the
resources spent on the i860 were better spent on the x86 line.  Whether
or not they decide that the i860 is worth a follow on is a separate
decision.

As for the chip itself, it was fine when it came out, and a few minor
architectural enhancements would have made it as good as any existing
RISC chip.  In fact, at equivalent clock rate with a proper memory system
design, I'd happily put the i860-XP as-is up against Alpha, HP, or RS6000,
and it would clearly beat the Sparc.

My opinions only, of course.
-- 
Larry Meadows		The Portland Group
lfm@pgroup.com