[GTALUG] example of why RISC was a good idea

[Alvin Starr]

On 05/22/2016 12:32 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 12:02:08PM -0400, Alvin Starr wrote:
>> Few of these technologies failed because of price.
>> One thing that will put several nails in the coffin of a processor is
>> not having a windows port.
>> Another is having a proprietary OS.
> Power, MIPS and Alpha all ran Windows NT 4.  Itanium ran XP and Server.
> Didn't seem to do any of them any good.
>
> ARM did not run windows until Windows CE and Windows RT.
>
The Alpha was very early on with Windows the DEC and MS guys were
working closely (I had dealings with both at the time) but MS dropped
the Alpha and there has been some suggestion that that decision was
externally influenced.
Up to the point of being dropped the Alpha looked like it was going to
make a go of it.
They had a couple of external manufacturers of the chipset and they were
tightly involved with AMD with Hypertransport.

I believe that the Itanium died because it could never quite deliver on
the performance that it promised.
That and the fact that AMD came up with the x86_64 which would run 32bit
windows just fine and would work with the existing software.

I can't comment much in Mips or Power.

Arm  got a big shot in the arm(pun intended) when it got windows ports
because there are a lot of people using embedded windows and then the
arm became open to them as a platform.
But I think the biggest thing for ARM has been the cell phone and
tablets, most of which do not run windows but linux or some RTOS.
Intel and AMD have been rushing to fill in that gap with smaller processors.


I did not say the windows would guarantee success just that it helps in
a significant way.



-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   voice: (905)513-7688
Netvel Inc.                   ||   Cell:  (416)806-0133
alvin at netvel.net              ||