> > I've never liked popularity contests since long term popularity fades.
>
> Shawn, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Anyone remember that
> old old instruction set that the Intel 8086 popularized? See what
> happens to popular technology? It fades from use, especially if it is
> underpowered and the only reason anyone is using it is because it is
> affordable.
I don't know whether you are being serious or subtle. Please be straightforward.
My apologies. Sometimes, I am too clever for my own good. I forget
that we are in a multilingual, multicultural communications medium,
that isn't aided by vocal tones and facial expressions.
One can not attribute the success of x86 to popularity; it is more
likely attributable to monopoly market power and market economics than
anything else.
There wasn't a monopoly to start out. There were plenty of competing
8, 16 and 32 bit microprocessors back in the day. Many of them were
technically superior to their x86 equivalents. x86 was the low end
processor that everyone made fun of. 68K, MIPS, Sparc, PA-RISC,
Itanium, DEC Alpha, PowerPC, i860, where all dubbed as x86 killers.
They have all either been relegated to the dustbin of history, or
pushed into ever shrinking niches.
You will note that the "monopoly market power", intel, that you
mentioned, tried to drive a stake through the heart of x86 at least
twice:
1) The i860 was supposed to be the RISC superchip that would make x86 obsolete.
2) The Itanium was the VLIW superchip that was to, once again, make
x86 obsolete. (it took a competitor continuing development of x86 to
make Intel remember the cardinal rules of popularity and price)
brian
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
