And for embedded processors, Microchip has the majority of the 8-bit market, and ARM has a strong presence in the higher-end (32-bit) embedded market... MIPS and Hitachi not too much any more.
-Mark -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 10:27 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:Nissan electric car 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 Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.375 / Virus Database: 270.13.34/2268 - Release Date: 07/28/09 06:00:00
