Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!umich!umeecs!msi.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!sialis!dmshq!com50!pai!erc From: erc@pai.UUCP (Eric F. Johnson) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Let's pretend Summary: Sorry, X is not that popular Keywords: Intel, 586, windows Message-ID: <1582@pai.UUCP> Date: 18 Dec 90 14:56:18 GMT References: <3042@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Organization: Boulware Technologies, Inc., Burnsville, MN Lines: 63 In article <3042@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>, davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes: > Let's pretend that we have the ear of the chip designers at Intel, > and that they have asked our opinion on what windows support should be > included in the new Intel 586. Please hold any negative comments about > Intel, CISC, etc, it's all been said... > [...deleted...] > Given that servers probably don't need graphics in most installations, > I would assume that X-windows has the largest user base of any single > window system, although it may be less than half the market. Much less. I would guess that for graphical windowing systems, the largest user base is for the Macintosh window system. (Yes, I'm well aware that the Mac doesn't use an 80x86 chip.) My guess would be, in order: 1) Macintosh--measure user base in millions 2,3) tie- Microsoft Windows, Amiga--around the 1 million mark for MS Windows, more for the Amiga, but that will soon change (note that I'm not saying whether this will be good or bad). If you read Personal Workstation, please tell them that the Amiga sports a multi-tasking operating system with a graphical user interface (for PW's strange application watch). 4) SunView - There are still probably more users of this than X, although that should change in 1991 in favor of X. How many people who buy Suns today still use SunView? Quite a lot, I'd venture. 5) The X Window System, although this will continue to grow, since it is available on multiple architectures and operating systems. > I believe that the time has come when enough address space is > available to allow direct mapping of graphics memory into memory on the > ISA and EISA bus, and that these busses will be used in the majority of > systems using Intel CPUs for the next two years or more. The performance > bottleneck of mapping a MB of data into 64k of address space would be > severe, even if it were done well. Cheap processors now have enough > address space to allow investing some of it in graphics. > -- > bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) > VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix. I like the idea of putting graphics support on chip (and it has been done before). I think it is in Intel's best interests to imbed support for Microsoft Windows into the 80x86, rather than X Window support. (I would prefer X support, which would make my "Wunderclone" into a decent X machine, but from Intel's point of view, MS Windows is the way to go. Also, since X has been ported to such a wide variety of machines, I'm sure that embedding MS Windows support on-chip would also provide a lot of good features that could be used for implementing X as well.) Have fun, -Eric PS, I know there are a lot of Amiga evangelists out there. I'm not trying to get your goat, just noting market reality. I am in no way trying to imply anything at all that could ever be considered bad about your wonderful machine. -- Eric F. Johnson phone: +1 612 894 0313 BTI: Industrial Boulware Technologies, Inc. fax: +1 612 894 0316 automation systems 415 W. Travelers Trail email: erc@pai.mn.org and services Burnsville, MN 55337 USA