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: <10423@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 14 Apr 88 14:18:10 GMT
References: <3358@omepd> <953@ima.ISC.COM>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 30
Keywords: 80960, RISC, embedded control

In article <953@ima.ISC.COM> marc@ima.UUCP (Marc Evans) writes:
| I remember a few years ago that Intel announced a processor called (I think)
| the 432...Now that I have read about this processor (80960) in some of the
| industry rags, as well as on the net, it seems to me that the 80960 is just
| a repackaged, supercharged version of the 432. Can anybody comment on this?

			432	80960
addressing		bit	byte
instruction set		CSIC	RISC
model			object	register

They don;t even have the same pin count or process.

| As a side... How 'bout the prices on the 80960MC $2490 (ref Electronic Products
| pg 16), and the bus exchange unit M82965 @ $1750... YOW!

I *think* Intel is shooting themselves in the foot on that one. While
they can make a large profit per chip (and how!), I believe that there
is a market for alternatives to the SPARC chipset in the workstation
market. I think that there are people who associate *86 with PC, no
matter what the speed. When I mentioned getting a Sun Roadrunner, the
comment was made "but, for that price you could buy a workstation."

Intel may rethink that price...I thnik someone is doing a mil spec
SPARC, and there is a tiny bit of thought given to price, even with tax
money. Plus you could develop software on the same CPU as the target.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me