Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!csun!kithrup!sef
From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Let's pretend
Keywords: Intel, 586, windows
Message-ID: <1990Dec19.051923.3837@kithrup.COM>
Date: 19 Dec 90 05:19:23 GMT
References: <1990Dec18.082623.16648@kithrup.COM> <15145@ogicse.ogi.edu> <24117@grebyn.com>
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Lines: 26

In article <24117@grebyn.com> ckp@grebyn.UUCP (Checkpoint Technologies) writes:
>In article <15145@ogicse.ogi.edu> borasky@ogicse.ogi.edu (M. Edward Borasky) writes:
>>I thought the way to improve performance was to REMOVE features!  And
>This is *not* an option when you have a significant software base to
>protect.  And surely Intel has a gargantuan software base to protect.
>Same with the 68K line.
>Just think of it.  Intel releases the 586, and to improve performance
>they remove a few complex instructions and replace them with one or two
>simpler but faster instructions.  No software that used those
>instructions will run.  Intel earns a bad rep and sells zero chips as
>the journalists take Intel apart for producing an incompatible chip.

Uhm... have you read about the 68030 and the 68040?  The '30 removed two
instructions that the '20 introduced (CALLM and RETM, I think), that few to
no people used.  The '40's on-board FPU does only a drastic subset of the
68882 (is that the 68k FPU?).  It basicly does add, subtract, mult, and div,
and a few others; the rest have to be emulated by the OS (or whatever is in
control of the machine).

Motorola has not earned a bad rep for that, nor have they sold zero chips.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it;
sef@kithrup.COM  |  I had a bellyache at the time."
-----------------+           -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.