🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr10.091036.3083@whetstone.uucp> whetstone!johnc@ms.uky.edu   
(John Coppinger) writes:
> My question is this: is the 88K really that fast?  Does Motorola really know  
> something about RISC that Sun doesn't?  How does Motorola get 75+ MIPS out of  
> their RISC when Sun is working pretty hard to squeeze 30 out of SPARC?  I'm   
not  
> a processor freak, so I don't really know about this stuff.  Can someone  
> enlighten me?
Translation:
SPARC CPU = pocket knife.

Everybody elses pocket knives became stronger through the use of a new steel.
But the SPARC knife didn't move over to this new steel. Part of the reason
was that Sun had alot of goodies that were based on the kind of steel that
the SPARC was made from, and they'd all have to be re-designed if the SPARC
changed steels.

Also, everybodies knives suddenly had a new fangled blade. Sun had planned
for adding this new blade but their plans had been laid before the details
of the new blade were well understood. Their plans turned out to require
lots of re-work. This re-work was complicated by the need to not change the
knife so much that the add-on goodies needed complete redesigns as well.

Part of the fun in watching this is that Sun decided to design their own
knife because they felt the other knife designers were moving too slowly in
upgrading their knife designs. Now the other knife designers have shown that
their longer term growth plans resulted in better knives than the shorter
term plans of Sun.

It's your classic 80's go-go-go-rosey-eye'd-short-term-planning-run-aground-
in-the-realities-of-the-real-world syndrome that's becoming all too common
these days.

And don't forget that Sun has almost zip experience when it comes to CPU
design. That the other companies can design rings around Sun should be no
great surprize. To put things in perspective even further here, I think Intel
had more dollar sales volume on *just* the 386 CPU than Sun did for it's
*entire* product line.

Yep, watching the real world is better than watching soap operas.

Scotty