Keith, I agree that's an interesting article, and I've been picking up on the Sun/Intel dance, but I'd say it's a little overstated too. MMX was sometimes promoted with talk of old-style DSP apps like software modems; imagine that under Win95. Other things to watch for: Merced, there's supposed to be a conflict between Intel and Microsoft on compilers, each wanting their own, and Merced's supposed to be very dependent on the compiler doing a good job.
Old cynic that I am, I'd say the fact that Microsoft took 10 years to ship a 32bit OS for Intel's 32 bit processor has probably left a certain skepticism in the Intel engineering corps about Microsoft. Then, Win95 still contained plenty of 16bit code. All those faster and faster 32 bit CPU's, running in 286 mode, for so many years. Warms an EE's heart thinking about it, not. Of course, Intel made plenty on the deal, they shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Cheers, Dan. |
