Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!usc!apple!amdcad!mozart.amd.com!cayman!brett From: brett@cayman.amd.com (Brett Stewart) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Tektronix shutdown & move away from 88k's?? Message-ID: <1990Oct30.165148.11050@mozart.amd.com> Date: 30 Oct 90 16:51:48 GMT References: <2176@lupine.NCD.COM> <42310@mips.mips.COM> Sender: usenet@mozart.amd.com (Usenet News) Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Austin, Texas Lines: 41 In article pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: > >mash> In article <2176@lupine.NCD.COM> rfg@NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) >mash> writes: > >rfg> I think this is pretty close to the mark. While I would not call >rfg> the 88k doomed, any more than I would call, say, the Intergraph >rfg> Clipper doomed, or the AMD29000, I think it has missed the chance >rfg> to gain any sizeable market penetration. I think you'll find a >rfg> trend in the industry toward clustering around 2 or 3 architectures >rfg> (as we have really always done: 8080/z80 and 6502, 80x86 and 680x0, >rfg> etc.). Unless something really strange happens, you'll see the >rfg> SPARC and MIPS chips float to the top of the heap. The rest of the >rfg> pack is left to niche markets or oblivion. > >mash> I don't know what the true metric is: chip unit volume, system >mash> unit volume, or total value. > >Well, if we are comparing chips it is probably total value of chips >shipped. Number of chips shipped is also another good metric, and >probably we want to see both numbers, because they say different things. >Given that CPU&support chips are a small fraction of system cost, it >seems silly to decide the popularity of a chip architecture on the unit >or sales volume of the systems it goes into. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Or even sillier to decide the popularity of a chip on ONLY ONE OR TWO systems that it goes into, rather than the collection of all the systems it goes into. It may not be well understood that the architecture contest is far from over for chip makers. I have sat in on discussions where we say things like 'only 50,000 29000's? It's not worth the trouble.' Economics for us, selling a sub $100 product with a few dollars of margin is very different from economics for other commentators in this forum. Our data says that most of the prospective consumers of 32-bit RISC's are as yet uncommitted, but will start to commit over the next, say, 18 months. Best Regards; Brett Stewart Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. 1-512-462-5321 FAX 5900 E. Ben White Blvd MS561 1-512-462-4336 Telephone Austin, Texas 78741 USA brett@cayman.amd.com