Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!vsi1!daver!tscs!pdn!oz!alan
From: alan@oz.nm.paradyne.com (Alan Lovejoy)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Next computer (Re: CISC Silent Spring)
Message-ID: <7372@pdn.paradyne.com>
Date: 10 Feb 90 04:32:48 GMT
References: <8905@portia.Stanford.EDU> <160@zds-ux.UUCP> <2100@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <7356@pdn.paradyne.com> <2113@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Sender: usenet@pdn.paradyne.com
Reply-To: alan@oz.paradyne.com (Alan Lovejoy)
Organization: AT&T Paradyne, Largo, Florida
Lines: 49

In article <2113@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes:
>In article <7356@pdn.paradyne.com> alan@oz.paradyne.com (Alan Lovejoy) writes:
>| But that was a strange question to ask.  The natural question would seem
>| to be "What has SPARC got that the 88k, and the Rx000, don't?"
>
>  You may like Sun, or hate them, but it seems unwise to ignore them.

True.

>By going SPARC a vendor gains access to a very large number of
>applications already ported to run on the CPU. SPARC has software, and
>(as MS-DOS proves) a CPU and o/s will be popular is there's enough good
>software for it, even if the o/s and CPU are at least a decade behind
>state of the art. 

And one also gains a very tough competitor--you know, those people we  
agreed it would be unwise to ignore?  Perhaps this explains the crowd of
Sun-clones curently flooding the market...

>  The fastest production versions of SPARC seem to beat the fastest
>production versions of CISC, and SunOS is reasonably up to date as a
>unix version, so there are obvious benefits from SPARC which the 88k
>didn't offer when it was selected. Oh, and SPARC is multi-source, too.

Well, I guess customers would feel more secure if the 88k were second-sourced.
After all, Motorola just might go belly up one of these days :-).  And if the
competition drives the SPARC price down to firesale prices, where will the
R&D money to produce the next generation come from?  Oh, SPARC is scaleable?
That's nice.  It hasn't seemed to provide it with any particular clock rate
advantage so far (both the SPARC and the 88k are in production at 33MHz,
for instance, in spite of the fact that the SPARC started out with 
approximately a years lead (perhaps more) over the 88k in introduction 
schedule).  

Commoditization is the kiss of death in the long run for any product which
must quickly evolve over time, since it leads to stagnation because the 
cost of improvement can't be justified--and is in fact resisted by the
customers who have grown dependent on its current form.  I'm sure we can
all think of examples of this in tech history.

But each MPU has its advantages and disadvantages.  None of them are "perfect,"
and can't be, since that's relative anyway.



____"Congress shall have the power to prohibit speech offensive to Congress"____
Alan Lovejoy; alan@pdn; 813-530-2211; AT&T Paradyne: 8550 Ulmerton, Largo, FL.
Disclaimer: I do not speak for AT&T Paradyne.  They do not speak for me. 
Mottos:  << Many are cold, but few are frozen. >>     << Frigido, ergo sum. >>