Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!mcnc!rti-sel!ge-rtp!ge-dab!steinmetz!nyfca1!itsgw!csmbox!rpics!rpics3b!almquisk From: almquisk@rpics3b.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.m68k,comp.sys.intel Subject: Re: Recent Motorola ad seen in Byte Message-ID: <120@rpics3b.RPI.EDU> Date: Sun, 26-Apr-87 15:16:42 EDT Article-I.D.: rpics3b.120 Posted: Sun Apr 26 15:16:42 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 29-Apr-87 01:30:18 EDT References: <930@intsc.UUCP> <1517@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <932@intsc.UUCP> <652@desint.UUCP> Distribution: comp Organization: RPI Dept of CS, Troy NY Lines: 37 Xref: utgpu comp.sys.m68k:400 comp.sys.intel:193 > What caused most of the frustration toward the 286 was DEC and Motorola > both went to a 32bit programming model at that time. Programmers quickly > jumped to arms to adhere to the old maxim of using all of the available > memory plus one byte. When these neat new programs (ie BSD 4.x) were > forced back down to the 16 bit architecture things got tricky. Many > programmers decided that programming in a 32 bit environment required > less effort and less need for structure than the 16 bit environment and > so to justify their not liking to work on 16 bit machines they were labled > as being kludges or obsolete. Did Intel simply fail to notice what was happenning to the price of memory? 16 bit machines are fine if you can't afford more than 64K of memory anyway. The VAX and the 68000 made it possible to take full advantage of the cheaper memory, but these days DEC sells memory for the PDP-11 in 1 Mbyte chunks. It is true that 32 bit environments can save on programming effort, which is very important these days since programming costs tend to exceed hardware costs. But that is only half the story. I own an old 68000 box, and the editor I use simply reads files being edited into space obtained by malloc. If I modified the editor to keep the files being edited on disk, the result would be *slow* because the disk has an 85 millisecond average access time. In the early 70's it was necessary to either shell out the money for fast disk drives or else live with slow editors, but today it is possible to buy lots of cheap RAM to speed up editing--if your CPU was designed to support it. > The 286 architecture is considerably nicer than what was the dominate > 16bit mini at the time, the PDP-11. But of course when the 286 came out the dominant mini of the time was the 32 bit VAX. From the point of view of a person accustomed to working with larger computers, the only really interesting chip that Intel has come out with is the 432. The problem with the 432 is that capability based systems are still not very well understood. It might be possible to build a nice system based upon the 432, but today the idea is to build UN*X boxes and you don't need a 432 to do that. Kenneth Almquist