Re: 11 most influential microprocessors of all time

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Michael Black wrote:

> After about 1980, there was a lot less innovation, because everyone
> wanted to be compatible with the past.  Things have changed drastically
> since then, yet at the core is mostly what was there back then.

An interesting perspective...

In fact, the Pentium computers that litter the Earth today might not
have come nearly so far so fast in performance without the "threat"
from MIPS, Sun, IBM, and, yes, HP.

The rate of innovation spurred by the intense chip competition of
the 1990s was a major factor in getting us to where we are today.

Ultimately, dumb-as-a-brickbat binary compatibility ruled, and
all the innovative architectures that generated the pressure on
Intel seem destined for the dustbin of history.

Now, the fact that an x86 machine requires 50% more logic (and lots
more pipeline stages) than its competitors to achieve comparable
performance is all but irrelevant, since processor chips have become
SRAM chips with a bit of logic thrown in--usually in multiple copies.

But they all run old x86 binaries natively!

-michael

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