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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (27197)	12/27/1997 2:08:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 1573092

Jim - Re: "You don't suppose that Intel pushed the FPU into the 486 to crush Weitek and Cyrix do you?" I'm sure that was part of the goal (but after the fact - see below) - but improving overall system perfromance was the ultimate objective. A closely coupled FPU (on chip) goes a long way for that. Your idea about CAD being the only software to support an FPU is way, way off. Lotus 1-2-3, version 2.a, (1983/1984) supported x87 code and every serious user of this spreadsheet purchased an 8087/287/387 to improve recalculation speeds - with 2x and 3x improvements where lots of real numbers (non-integers) were present - which is typical of all financial data. By the way, the 80486 was announced in April, 1989 - and the design must have started at least two years before that - 1987. I'd say that was well before the Cyrix x87 clone was ever on the market. And the designers of Quake were probably still in high school at that time, chasing cheerleaders. Paul

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (27197)	12/28/1997 10:24:00 AM
From: gnuman	Respond to of 1573092

Jim McMannis, re; FPU's Actually, Intel was a promoter of the Weitek chip. Intel even had a representative on the Weitek Board of Directors. The Weitek chip required a special socket, and was an enhancement to the Intel coprocessor option. A few manufactuers socketed their mother boards for both the Intel and Weitek FPU's. I don't think Intel considered Weitek a competitor. Also, IIT was a year ahead of Cyrix, introducing it's first FPU, a 287 clone, in 1987. IIT sold around $100 million of their 287/387 coprocessors. The Intel coprocessors were probably more profitable than their CPU's, with some going for over a $1000, at a very low COG. The competition from IIT, and eventually Cyrix, drove the prices down to around $75. Was this a factor in Intel's decision to integrate the FPU onto the CPU? I guess only they know.