Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Press Release: Intel announces 80960 architecture
Message-ID: <10382@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 12 Apr 88 20:09:38 GMT
References: <3358@omepd> <10320@steinmetz.ge.com> <8755@reed.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 27
Keywords: 80960, RISC, embedded control

In article <8755@reed.UUCP> mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg) writes:
>In article <10320@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>>Questions on the 80960:
>>  2) why didn't they release this instead of the 80386?
>>  3) why is it for "embedded applications" (as opposed to general use)?
>
>Controllers for "embedded applications" are a huge and growing market
>that seems to have been largely ignored by other RISC chip manufacturer
>(where the main orientation seems to be toward workstations).  If there

I phrased that one badly... the real question was "why is this an
embedded CPU rather than a general purpose unit," and the answer seems
to be marketing rather than technical. Like the RPM40 this would make a
nice workstation chip, perhaps in many ways better than the RPM40. It's
too bad that the initial thrust is in that direction, but I would be
surprized if someone doesn't build a testbed workstation inhouse just to
see what the costs really are.

A UNIX port is getting easier to do all the time, since there are more
good people around. If only a PCC style compiler were needed I suspect
that it could be done in a minimal way (kernel + C) in a year. Not that
ordering wouldn't make it faster, but the scoreboard seems to make it
practical to run a less than optimal sode generator.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me