[email protected] writes: > From: Rich Pieri <[email protected]> > > SPARC and ARM architectures succeeded without being owned by > monopoly manufacturers. AMD, especially AMD64, succeeded *despite* the > architecture being "owned" by a monopoly manufacturer.
I don't think I understand what your point is. SPARC was developed by Sun, and assuming that Sun knew something about doing business, they stood to make good money if SPARC succeeded in the desktop market -- they had a monopoly on SPARC processors, or at least, in licensing the IP therefore. Hence they had an incentive to ensure all of the hardware interface bric-a-brac was well-defined for whatever class of computers they were targeting. Similarly ARM was developed and licensed by Acorn -- now "Arm Holdings plc" -- so they have a similar incentive. Though ARM is mostly used for embedded systems where the people buying the processors expect to get their hands dirty with the hardware interfaces. > AMD64 and ARM succeeded for the same reason: ... AMD64 had a different advantage: The interfaces they needed to be compatible with were largely designed already for x86 systems. > Given that there are something on the order of 10 billion RISC-V > cores out there in production world-wide, it's very much ready for prime > time. Well, if you remember my original question -- which I think you answered -- I was asking about general consumer/business desktop/laptop applications. Embedded applications are different, since those users (like the fellow in the BLU meeting in December) intend to get their hands dirty with the hardware interfaces, so there's little need for market-wide "plug and play" standardization. Dale _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
