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From: kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari16,net.micro.mac
Subject: 68030 vs. 80386 (was The Mot. 68030)
Message-ID: <654@dragon.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 12:24:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: dragon.654
Posted: Wed Oct  1 12:24:47 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 08:55:56 EDT
References: <2270@gitpyr.UUCP> <7637@sun.uucp> <729@sauron.UUCP> <200@mipos3.UUCP>
Reply-To: kurt@dragon.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth)
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
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Keywords: cpu wars
Xref: watmath net.micro.68k:1919 net.micro.amiga:5084 net.micro.atari16:2304 net.micro.mac:8082

Uh oh, it's the CPU wars again...[Warning -- 68000 partisan]

It seems to me that the 68030, not the 68020, competes with the '386.  Isn't
this right?  Intel seems proud of the fact that they have arrived first in
the market at each 'generation' (8086 vs. 68000, 80286 vs. 68020, 80386 vs.
68030).  But what do they think of the relative power of the competing
devices?  I note that Commodore Amiga (and other vendors) sell software
emulators for the 8086 that have reasonable performance on the 68000.  What
about this?  What about relative floating point performance of the
comparable chips when an application cannot afford the expensive 8087
coprocessor?  What about the disastrous tradeoffs that must be made when a
program must access large data arrays?  Even the lowly 68010 could operate
in a true virtual memory environment, but Intel has only recently arrived at
this performance level.

Now I agree that Mot. has jumped the gun substantially in their announcement
of the 68030, and are therefore sinking to a rather low level of marketing.
They join another company at that level, one who has a longstanding
reputation for bogus benchmarks, late deliveries, non-functional production
silicon, and offensive marketing.  

[I am affiliated with neither Intel nor Motorola.  Opinions are my own.]