Re: 11 most influential microprocessors of all time

[Eric Rucker <bhtooefr@gmail.com>]

On Sep 2, 11:06 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> PA-RISC shook up the industry in the 1990s, by pushing performance
> harder than most thought possible.  And it was the major factor in
> catapulting HP into the server and high performance workstation markets.
>
> Unfortunately, having done its job, it's largely retired now...but
> it was a heck of a run!

More to the point, how did PA-RISC influence the marketplace in the
long run?

In the long run, PA-RISC got killed in favor of Itanium, and it was
all but forgotten about.

Every single chip on that list except for possibly COSMAC and the 8088
strongly influenced the marketplace in some way. 4004 for being the
first, 8080 for making microprocessors practical at all for home
computers, 6502 and Z80 for making them cheap, 68000 for making
personal computers with GUIs practical, Pentium for marketing the CPU
rather than the computer, and ARM and PPC for ramming themselves
deeply into the embedded space. The 8088 was lucky (whatever was in
the IBM PC would have probably dominated the market, therefore, the
8088 wasn't what was influential,) and the COSMAC... yes, it was in a
well-known embedded application, but what else did it really do for
the market?