Yes, you're right, I forgot Cyrix.
I probably forgot one or two others as well. I almost forgot Zilog, then remembered it. In its day, it was hot stuff, with the Z80 dominating the 8080 in many areas. (They stumbled with their version of the "Hammer," their 32-bit Z8000. Lack of manufacturing prowesse, a bit like AMD today.)
I also should have mentioned National more prominently. Their 32032 and variants (32016) were well-respected in their day...the mid-80s. The box maker Sequent even introduced its first products with National micros (Sequent was started by mostly Intel Oregon people, eventually introduced Intel-based multiprocessors, was bought by IBM, and is now, it seems, being folded).
People often forget that the micro market once had a dozen serious contenders, in several competing camps. Today, Intel is utterly dominant, with AMD trying to catch some of the crumbs.
The Alpha is gone, the MIPS is relegated to game machines, SPARC has but once customer, PowerPC is doing OK in its one niche, the Mac (which I use several of, so PPC is not dead for me, yet), and so on.
IBM's Power4, which is related to PPC but which is not the same as PPC, is doing well in IBM's mainframes and some of its servers and workstations...but IBM covers its bets with Xeons, etc.
All in all, the competitive field has mostly emptied out. The players have gone home and Intel is left standing.
--Tim May |
