Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tcmay who wrote (136319)	5/30/2001 4:03:02 AM
From: Saturn V	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

<Microcontrollers as Graveyards .... So, I think it off-base to characterize the 29K, 32K, MIPS, 960, and 860 architectures as "microcontrollers." > Obviously I did not mean that MIPS, National 32000,i960 etc were designed as microcontrollers. I am well aware that they were designed as general purpose processors. They either failed in that attempt, or the management did not want to pursue them as general purpose processors any more ( due to high infrastructure cost or lack of market acceptance or product overlap etc). Thus these elegant and fine products ended up as microcontrollers. Elegant architecture is not enough to ensure business success. The Itanium is obviously the ultimate in elegance today. But that alone guarantees very little, as I discussed earlier.The key will be getting the developer community to port the software on this platform, provide the hardware infrastructure, and provide the roadmap which will solidify the faith of the software vendors.

To: tcmay who wrote (136319)	5/30/2001 10:41:49 AM
From: dale_laroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

>Interestingly, the 29K's main competitor was the 960, written about here by one of the Intel folks who worked on it. It ended up as a microcontroller, albeit a powerful one, but it started out as part of the 8800/432/Gemini/Biin product series. One of the design variants even use tag bits, like the LISP machines of the day.< I was unaware of the i960 being targeted at any market other than the microcontroller market. When I worked at YARC, the Intel reps attempting to get us to design coprocessor boards using the i860 and the i960 always presented the i860 as a general purpose processor for our scientific and visualization markets, while presenting the i960 as an embedded processor, primarily for our laser printer market. It is interesting to note that, while we used no cache for our 29K market, Intel reps accused us of cheating by running it at less than zero wait states, thus making it appear to be faster than it really was.