Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!amdcad!crackle!tim
From: tim@crackle.amd.com (Tim Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Criteria ... [really: are N designs better than 1?]
Message-ID: <25784@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 30 May 89 13:46:09 GMT
References: <2368@ogccse.ogc.edu> <1464@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU> <141@dg.dg.com> <19088@winchester.mips.COM> <674@pitstop.West.Sun.COM> <m0fRxlf-0001fDC@mipon2.intel.com>
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Reply-To: tim@amd.com (Tim Olson)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sunnyvale CA
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In article <m0fRxlf-0001fDC@mipon2.intel.com> mcg@mipon2.UUCP (Steven McGeady) writes:
| I suspect that Sun is beginning to attempt to position SPARC in
| realtime and embedded markets: a) as a fallback position in case they
| don't succeed as thoroughly as they hope in the workstation market; and
| b) because the volume of design wins and chip sales in 32-bit embedded
| control is (conservatively) 10x the workstation market.
| 
| This is the same strategy that drove AMD to move the 29k out of
| workstation land, as well as Weitek and the XL8xxx, and (of late)
| National and the 32k series.

While this may be true for SPARC and the 32k series, the Am29000 was
PDP'ed (Product Design Plan) as an embedded controller (because of the
volumes) -- it certainly isn't a "fallback position".  That is not to
say that we wouldn't *allow* our chips to be used in workstations ;-)


	-- Tim Olson
	Advanced Micro Devices
	(tim@amd.com)