Replies to post #16478 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

CombJelly,

It's a telling point that the iAPX432 had the full backing of Intel, until the moment it didn't.

Good point. I've been trying to point this out about Itanium for a while now, that in two former cases (iAPX432 and i860) Intel was 100% behind them until they weren't. iAPX432 was killed. i860 became an embedded processor when it was apparent it would not compete well as a general purpose processor.

With Itanium, the effort has been longer, more public and more expensive. Started as the new architecture that would unite desktop through high-end server, Itanium has already been kicked upstairs to high-end server only. Don't have to be psychic to predict this progression:

1. Itanium kicked upstairs already, as noted above.

2. x86-64 (AMD64?) announced by Intel as the desktop solution.

3. Joint announcement by Intel and HP about a new agreement in which HP takes over the primary development role for Itanium, manufacturing commitment by Intel.

4. Intel stops marketing Itanium, leaving that to HP and simply becomes a foundry. Meanwhile, new versions of x86-64 processors start integrating features first prototyped in Itanium. EPIC Light introduced, possibly limited to special floating point instructions (maybe a replacement for the SSE series).

Probably, Intel will adopt AMD64 and then try to take it in a proprietary direction over time.

[Jules2]

"Posted by: CombJelly
In reply to: salasidis who wrote msg# 16470 Date:10/31/2003 9:58:28 PM
Post #of 16512

"I believe it was designed to run Ada"

Yep. That was in the days when Ada was going to displace Pascal, and with the backing of the DoD, take over the world. Maybe even literally. A nice feature was it's ability to increase performance by just adding more function units. Unfortunately, as you note, it was starting from a fairly low point. I got the manuals around here somewhere...

It's a telling point that the iAPX432 had the full backing of Intel, until the moment it didn't. There were follow on versions so there was an upgrade path, at least on paper. And then it was gone.""

ADA was indeed pushed by DOD. Mainly thru the U.S. Airforce.
It was a popular languege for the machine tool industrie. Now AFAIK Gcode is used more widely. One of my clients had some Boring mill machines made by Brother, (I thought they only made printers?). They had 38 tool cassetes and grabbed a tool, did the operation , put it back in the cassete, etc.

My client said, it gets the first tool, does the oper. and stops. Email me with an attachment w/ this G code so I can look it over, I said. He did. There was no instruction to put the tool back. Added the instr. and all was well.

It's little added services like that, that make clients better clients.

Jules