Re: Somehow, I think the company that invented the microprocessor...
In all seriousness, Intel, or at least its microprocessor business, was looking like it would soon be history until it got tagged by IBM. The 8080 was fine start, but the Z80a, with 50% higher clock speed and twice as many instructions just blew it away in terms of performance. Intel held on to some of the low end business with it's 8085 because the 8085 integrated some functions that were offboard on other chips. But by the end of the 70's, Intel was the Cyrix of the MPU business.
Moving on to the 16 bit generation, everyone expected the Z8000 to dominate, although Motorola had an excellent chip in the 68000 and was a real competitor, the 8086/8088 was barely an also ran - until IBM tagged it for the IBM personal computer.
Zilog screwed up the Z8000 and all but disappeared, IBM picked the 8088 for the PC, and the rest is history. Intel followed the 808X with the infamously "brain-dead" 80286. (there was an 80186, but, other than one Radio Shack system, to the best of my recollection it was mainly used as an embedded processor)
Eventually, Intel produced the 386, 486, and Pentium. Great chips that weren't just great but were also backward compatible and that Intel also succeeded in producing in very large volume at relatively low cost. But Intel was carried along for years by IBM's decision. I think it's unfair to criticize AMD for being an honest second source for Intel, as though Intel had never gotten a break of its own.
Dan |
