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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!feg
From: feg@clyde.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Intel Microprocessors (fair benchmarking)
Message-ID: <12990@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: Fri, 28-Aug-87 10:05:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: clyde.12990
Posted: Fri Aug 28 10:05:18 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Aug-87 16:53:23 EDT
References: <4381@intelca.UUCP> <416@aucs.UUCP> <4048@utai.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ
Lines: 33
Summary: Software--not hardware drives cpu design

In article <4048@utai.UUCP>, anton@utai.UUCP (Anton Geshelin) writes:
> In article <416@aucs.UUCP> peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) writes:
> >I would think the "fairest" benchmarks should compare the following chips:
> >    68000 <--> 8086
> >    68008 <--> 8088
> >    68010 <--> 80186
> >    68020 <--> 80286
> >    68030 <--> 80386
> >And from what I hear, the 68030 blows the 80386 out of the water...
> 
> I cannot see the logic behind this statement.
> I THINK that we should compare current production hardware.  I THINK that
> we should compare similarly priced systems like the new Macs and 386
> machines, because that is what can be had right now and not in the year
> 2001.  
> What we have in the preceeding message is a futile attempt to throw some sand
> in the form of 68030 into our eyes.

  Amen. We could go like this forever. 68040, 68050, 68060, 80486, 80586
  ad infinitum, ad nauseam.  But there are millions of "brain-damaged" PC's
  and hundreds of thousands of Macs.  As several others have mentioned,
  the overriding factor on Intel's design was prior software overhang.
  They, like IBM before them, had their eyes on that.  People-cost in
  software is a far greater aggregate than any goodies made available
  by technical smarts in the CPU, which breaks that software inventory.
  The smartest decision IBM ever made was to force all succeeding
  computer designs to run preceding software, beginning with the
  360.  Whether we programmer hackers like it or not, that is going
  to be the way of the future.  Whose micro PC has recently been
  fixed to run the other guy's software? Was it the Mac or the IBM PC?
  You get one guess.

Forrest Gehrke