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From: phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: AMD 29000
Message-ID: <1990Sep6.191224.2916@amd.com>
Date: 6 Sep 90 19:12:24 GMT
References: <534@cpsolv.CPS.COM> <33558@cup.portal.com>
Sender: usenet@amd.com (NNTP Posting)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc; Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 37

In article <33558@cup.portal.com>
mslater@cup.portal.com (Michael Z Slater) writes:
|The disadvantage of the 29000 for Unix workstations is that there is no
|Unix port!
|
|This has nothing to do with the architecture, but is a marketing decision
|that AMD made a couple years ago.  With SPARC and MIPS looking very strong
|in the Unix arena, and with the importance of building a base of third-party
|software for Unix workstations, AMD decided to focus all their efforts on {
|embedded applications.  I think it was a wise choice.
|
|Does anyone know of any real architectural reasons why the 29K Unix port was
|never completed?

I don't speak for AMD but I also think it was a wise marketing
decision for AMD to stop chasing Unix, and that's what it really
is, a constant chase. We had the beginning of a System V port, but
it was 5.2. At the time, we were looking at big bucks for a 5.3
port, we already knew that 5.4 would be coming out and I also
knew about the beginning of OSF. We also had the beginning of a BSD
port but it was clear that enormous manpower would be needed to support
it and that SPARC was probably going to own the Unix world anyway.

If we could have just paid 1/4 of a million dollars to start a
Unix port and let it grow on its own I'm sure we would have done
that but it was clear that playing in the Unix game takes multi-mega
bucks and it did not seem economically prudent to fund it.

We even had a working DOS emulator which ran Lotus 123, but again,
we would only have lost money at it.

We are looking at embedded controller stuff and anyone who has a
kernel with TCP that would be interested in a relationship with us
should get in touch.

--
Phil Ngai, phil@amd.com		{uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil