[GTALUG] example of why RISC was a good idea

[James Knott]

On 05/22/2016 12:11 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> If I remember correctly, Gordon Bell said
> roughly that you could update an architecture once, but after that
> things get to be a mess.
You might want to read "The Soul of a New Machine" for an interesting
story.  It was about Data General's attempt to build a 32 bit computer. 
This would have been the 3rd generation, after the Nova and Eclipse
lines.  I read this book back in the days when I was maintaining Nova
and Eclipse computers, so I had a bit more insight than most.

> One of Intel's motivations for Itanium seemed to be to own the
> architecture.  It really was unhappy with having given a processor
> license to AMD.

One problem with that is some customers, particularly military, were
allergic to single source equipment.  As I recall, Intel had to second
source their products because of this.  As a result, AMD, Siemens & NEC,
IIRC, all made compatible "Intel" products under licence.