🚀 go-pugleaf

[==> Followups have been redirected to net.micro.68k <==  If you care
about this topic, please start reading about it there.  The mac/amiga/atari
users have enough to talk about without Intel/Motorola flames.  I'm just glad
nobody has tried including net.micro.pc, then the flames would really start!]

I believe it is correct to compare the 80386 with the 68020, on a feature
by feature basis.  They are both the first 32-bit processor from each
company, have similar cycle and instruction times, addressing capabilities,
etc.

In the past Intel has been first to market each level of chip.
However, they spent too much time at the 16-bit level (on the 186 and
286, both of which took longer than expected), and Motorola worked hard
to get out of the gate first at the 32-bit level.  (My favorite "why
IBM chose the 8088" rumor is that Motorola couldn't build them 1/4
million chips the first year and Intel could since they had been
ramping up longer.  Be interesting to see if Motorola's taking the lead
at 32 bits makes any difference now.)

My impression is that the relative power of each chip relates strongly
to its design date.  Thus, Motorola chips have tended to be more
powerful than the corresponding Intel chips, because they were designed
slightly later.  The 80386 should be faster than the 68020, since it is
coming out about a year later.  They made a big mistake in leaving out
the cache, though they did put in a neat feature for interleaved memory
access, so it probably runs in roughly the same speed range unless you
give it a fancy memory subsystem.  (If a fancy memory is assumed,
though, then the faster possible clock rate on the 68020 comes into
play, maybe making it an even heat again.)  The 68030 will be faster
than both, since it will be yet another year later.  And so on...

I'm not going to argue the merits of Intel versus Motorola.  It is clear
to me that both have learned from each other.  Now it is up to us, the
users, to learn to write our stuff portably so we can move it to the machine
of whoever is learning the fastest at each point in time.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
		     May the Source be with you!