🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4d3fu9$2t2@eraserhead.jpl.nasa.gov>, curt@beowulf.jpl.nasa.gov
(Curt Eggemeyer) wrote:

> >And by the way the 604 is a somewhere between a Pentium and a Pentium 
> >Pro in speed (excluding the newest Pentiums which at 166MHz do gain some 
> >advantage). This is assuming that the Pentium Pro is running 32 bit 
> >apps (ie Spec95 benchmarks etc).
> 
> The Pentium Pro's maybe faster in some respect, but they don't compete
> with the powerPC chips when it comes to production costs. In the end
> Intel will have to reduce their massive transistor count if they hope
> to remain competitive with the other cpu producers.

Well, this is certainly the usual agrument. It might even be correct. But,
what if you have a "bad, inelegant, inefficient" design and then you make
and sell so many of them that economies of scale reduce the system price
to the same (or less) than the competing "good, elegant, efficient"
designs that sell in quantities 10 times less than the "bad" design. The
end price can come out the same, or almost the same despite the argument
about transistor count, etc.

Don't get me wrong. I own a PowerMac. I wouldn't dream of using anything
else. I'm just saying that this argument over cpu prices is simplistic and
has been overdone.