Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!ames!amdcad!cae780!leadsv!hooper
From: hooper@leadsv.UUCP (Ken Hooper)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Intel Microprocessors
Message-ID: <1663@leadsv.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Aug-87 11:02:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: leadsv.1663
Posted: Fri Aug 14 11:02:54 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Aug-87 07:00:02 EDT
Organization: LMSC-LEADS, Sunnyvale, Ca.
Lines: 28
Summary: It all depends on what you're trying to do!


  As with most such `religeous' arguments, the `goodness' of a 68020 vs. a
80386 is dependant on the circumstances. If I were designing a cheap, high
volume microcontroller, I wouldn't choose either. But if the task were a
general purpose, multi-tasking personal computer, neither would I choose a
68008 or 8088 (at least now). At the time the 8088 was designed, 64k was a
lot of memory, and 1M was incredible, so while you may fault them for
short-sightedness, they certainly aren't `brain-damaged'. Because Motorola
was late to the market place, they were able to learn from Intel's bold step.
(BTW I though the real innovation in the 8086 was the pipelined architecture.)
  Enter IBM. At the time the IBM-PC was designed, the only competition to the
8086/8 was the Z8000, that decision may have been wrong, but when you're on
a schedule you can't wait for Motorola to get around to shipping a yet to
be seen product. As for their recent choice to stay with the Intel line in the
PS/2; what would you have them do? Switch to the architecture their major
competitors already have several years experience with? Hurt the value of their
own Intel property? Alienate all their previous PC customers? Their decision
was and is perfectly reasonable from their point of view, and most of their
customers'.
  The people on this net are far from typical users. We can hardly expect the
industry to revolve around us. I personally find the 68000 a more pleasant
architecture to design with, but I'd give the 80x8x line the benefit of more
compact code and higher performance in general. But the choice of a processor
is affected by many more factors than ease of assembly coding and Whetstones
per second. As for arguments about whether a PS/2 model 80 is faster than a
Macintosh II, that's an almost totally unrelated subject, which is in turn
largely unrelated to which one you should buy.
						Ken Hooper