🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <30FD84E9.3F54BC7E@nauplius.rsmas.miami.edu>, Ivan Lima
<ivan@nauplius.rsmas.miami.edu> wrote:

> Charles Bouldin wrote:
> > 
> >
> > 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.
> 
> 
> Agree 100%. When the firsts PowerPCs came out they said they were going
to wipe out the Pentiums because they (PowerPCs)
> were "faster" and "cheaper". Look at the situation now. Intel is more
dominant than ever.
> 

There's a big difference and 1996/1997 could dramatically change the industry.

1. Microsoft is telling everyone to switch to WinNT (some now, some later).

2. WinNT runs on many different processors. MS is no longer tied to Intel
(did you notice how fast Intel announced plans for a P6 which runs 16 bit
code faster?).

3. PPCP machines will run WinNT, OS/2 (maybe), MacOS, BeOS, UNIX, and Linux.

4. Byte Magazine tested commercial apps under WinNT on a PPC 604 vs a P6
and the 604 won handily.

5. The 604 chip is considerably less expensive than the P6. Since there
will be multiple motherboard suppliers for PPCP (3 announced so far), the
remainder of the machine cost should be in line with x86 hardware. With an
adequate clone market, PPCP machines will be _at least_ competitive with
x86 on price.

There's no doubt about it. The next two years are a major threat to Intel.
Whether they'll dominate or not remains to be seen--they still have a lot
of good technology and marketing up their sleeves.

-- 
Regards,       Joe Ragosta

Copyright Joseph M. Ragosta, 1995. Non-exclusive, royalty free license to distribute this post granted to any service provider except Microsoft. Fee for Microsoft is $1,000 per posting.