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From: ram@nucsrl.UUCP (Renu Raman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Social Issues in Benchmarking Bake-offs
Message-ID: <3810039@nucsrl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Jun-87 23:53:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: nucsrl.3810039
Posted: Mon Jun  8 23:53:40 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jun-87 01:22:04 EDT
References: <4667@fritz.UUCP>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
Lines: 32



>Gentlemen:

   If you don't get flamed for addressing "Gentlemen" alone, we can safely
   assume that this is an all male newsgroup (How sad).

>There are some companies that are likely to benefit hugely from
>such an event. They, of course, are the small companies, 
>eager to get market share and with little market share to 
>protect, who have been able to design an architecture to 
>exploit current technology without regard for compatibility :-).

    Martin hit it on the nail here about designing with compatibility in
    mind.  Take the case of the IBM 360s/VAXens/Intel.  The 360
    was definitely a workhorse of the 60-70s (with an excellent architecture
    for its time) but got plagued by compatability features. 
    The other end of the spectrum like AMD, MIPS (certainly not small)
    where compatibility is not the issue, the designs have been bold and 
    innovative.  Would they also degenerate into mediocrity with market
    build-up?

    The problem becomes more severe to-day with RISCy processors,
    [as design issues/RISC ideas are notoriously different from
    group to group (group = individual/corp/univ/research ctr)]
    where maintaining compatibility over a generation of processors
    will certainly be difficult.  At the same time one needs 
    compatibilty to stay in business. What do you optimize here?

>Martin S. McKendry
>FileNet Corp
>{hplabs,trwrb}!felix!martin