Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
> There was a tremendous effusion of computer CPU and ALU architecture in
> the 1970s and 1980s, as minicomputers and microcomputers competed. Now
> there is only Intel.
Really? That's odd -- at work we use an awful lot of X86-64 systems.
Last I heard that wasn't an Intel part; Intel second sources under
license, it but it's AMD's baby.
Okay, there's only Intel and AMD. And maybe IBM.
My point is that back in 1975 there were dozens of companies
developing CPU architectures, and the resulting computers were
incompatible and had very different performance characteristics.
Whereas today there are few. Perhaps MPP architecture will take off
in the coming years and we will be in a new era CPU design effusion.
These things tend to come in waves, or perhaps I should say
punctuated equilibria. There were few fundamental changes to
automobile design between 1930 and 1990 and then suddenly, boom, we
have hybrids and electric cars.
A sign of the diminished importance of CPU design is the fact that
the #5 fastest supercomputer in 2005 was the Dell Thunderbird at
Sandia National Laboratories. Dell is not an engineering-oriented
company. They take things out of boxes, assemble them, and ship them.
I doubt they have much influence on CPU design, whereas I'll bet Apple does.
- Jed
