From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2021 09:02:11 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [SPAM] Re: Architectures -- was [TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode In-Reply-To: <20210205145618.GE13916@mcvoy.com> References: <202102030759.1137x7C2013543@freefriends.org> <202102030858.1138wuqd011051@freefriends.org> <27567.1612399305@hop.toad.com> <20210204013356.GA16541@mcvoy.com> <20210205145618.GE13916@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 5 Feb 2021, Larry McVoy wrote: > I think Intel is sort of in the same place Sun was. Fat, dumb, and > happy with the profits they are making and can't see what is coming. I guess we'll find out soon enough; there is a history of companies "too big to fail" of failing. > It just didn't make sense to have $20,000 Sun workstations when a $2,000 > PC was at least half as good. I advocated for SunOS on x86, to me, it > was the operating system that delivered the value, everything just > worked on SunOS, for any other OS you were doing the configure dance. > Offer SunOS on x86 and capture the low end market. The East coast Sun > did the road runner but West coast Sun sneered at it, patches for x86 > were not processed very fast, if at all. It's a shame. I actually got to play with a Road Runner at a Sun conference (its hostname was "milpitas" of course) and came away impressed that one of the best OSes ran on the worst possible architecture :-) > If Intel doesn't want to make money off of the cheap, but very high > volume, $20 SOC, Apple has shown that it has the chops to make a cheap, > fast, and power sipping M1 chip. Pretty impressive and if I were Intel, > I'd be nervous. Apple has shown they can switch architectures pretty > painlessly repeatedly. The x86 lock in isn't much of a lock in these > days. Well, when you're big enough to be able to make both your own HW and SW then things will go smoothly (which is why my MacBook works so well). I look forward to Brian Krebs' "Patch Tuesday" announcements; I can only think that it's some form of "Stockholm Syndrome" despite there being many free alternatives. Heck, I remember in the days of the Pee-Cee "grey imports" that if it didn't run Flight Simulator then it was illegal; shortly afterwards if it didn't run FS then nobody would buy it... Ah, "schadenfreude" is such a beautiful word :-) -- Dave