The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
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From: Andrew Swallow on 26 Mar 2007 20:09 Morten Reistad wrote: [snip] > > DEC _did_ come back with the alpha, just as soon as they had managed > to deVAXify their brains. Except, by then the trust in the company had > evaporated. The only sensible use for the Alpha was to run microcode as a VAX. When chip manufacturing technology allowed CISC CPUs on a single chip the cost advantages of RISC were over. Andrew Swallow
From: Peter Flass on 26 Mar 2007 20:36 Morten Reistad wrote: > > We keep harping on this. I have wondered why. I think this is a discussion > of today's dangers by proxy. > > The important lesson from the events is that you should never, ever > have a single source for the equipment that runs your business critical > systems. Even if it is DEC, IBM, HP or a similar blue-chip giant. Perhaps. I think the lesson is "never f&ck with your customers." > > Because even DEC folded on us. Not as spectacularly as International > Harvester a century before, but enough to shake us all. > > DEC was a company with a reputation far ahead of today's HP or Microsoft. > Somewhat like a reconsituted IBM of today, or Intel, or Apple. These companies > are/were blue-chip giants that constitute a core of IT technology. Probably ahead of Apple. M$ isn't even in the same league. DEC was the anti-IBM - their computers were simple and fun to use (like Apple, perhaps), inexpensive (not like Apple), and easily interfaced to a variety of equipment (not like anybody). > > But the lesson is that if DEC can implode, so can they. > > The lesser ones all imploded. Wang, Prime, Norsk Data, ICL, Honeywell, > NCR, Siemens, DG and more all imploded in that decade. In our guts, > we kind of expected somesuch to happen. It was DEC that shook us. I think the problem is that it appeared totally unnecessary. Barb blames individuals in management. I don't know enough to comment, but I do know that they had a very competitive product line, and obviously loyal customers. Perhaps, to those in the know, the decisions that were made were the only ones possible, but it seems stupid in hindsight. > > Today we wouldn't be much shaken if HP/Compaq, Dell, Lenovo, TCI, Via, Sun, > or even AMD implodes. It will be momentarily painful for us as customers, > but we will migrate elsewhere. Workers and PHB's can follow the business > that moves without too much trouble. > > It is when outfits like Apple, IBM, Intel or Microsoft folds that we > are shaken, all of us. I refrain from commenting with reghard to Microsoft. > > The lesson from DEC is that it can happen. > > Always have a Plan B. > > -- mrr
From: krw on 26 Mar 2007 20:43 In article <fqWdnV-JLsRJ_ZXbRVnyiAA(a)bt.com>, am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com says... > Morten Reistad wrote: > [snip] > > > > > DEC _did_ come back with the alpha, just as soon as they had managed > > to deVAXify their brains. Except, by then the trust in the company had > > evaporated. > > The only sensible use for the Alpha was to run microcode as a VAX. > When chip manufacturing technology allowed CISC CPUs on a single chip > the cost advantages of RISC were over. I think you'll find there are a few people who will disagree with you. -- Keith
From: John Byrns on 26 Mar 2007 20:48 In article <eu938g$9t7$1(a)gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk>, nmm1(a)cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote: > In article <56qh33F29t3i0U1(a)mid.individual.net>, > Del Cecchi <cecchinospam(a)us.ibm.com> writes: > |> > |> They probably would have run out of pdp-8 and pdp-11 customers sooner or > |> later. And by the early 80's I would think those systems were in the > |> down part of the lifecycle. > > Unclear. PDP11s dominated the (computer) communications in the early > 1980s, even in many sites with System/370 mainframes! They were run > for many years after their official demise, because they were just SO > much better for the purpose than anything else. > > What DEC should have done (and was told so at the time) was to produce > a 32-bit PDP11, specialised for such purposes, and capture the computer > communication market. This would have been a completely separate range > from the VAX, but would have needed very little software support, and > not all that much in the way of peripheral support. I always thought DEC should have extended the PDP-11 to 32 bits and skipped the VAX. The PDP-11 was a very elegant design whose fatal flaw was its 16 bitness, while the VAX seemed overly complex to me. I can't remember how I thought DEC should have gone about extending the PDP-11 instruction set to 32 bits, I guess that gives me a second chance to think about it. Do you know what the proposals were at the time for how the PDP-11 instruction set could have been extended to 32 bits? Regards, John Byrns -- Surf my web pages at, http://fmamradios.com/
From: David Kanter on 27 Mar 2007 01:50
On Mar 26, 5:09 pm, Andrew Swallow <am.swal...(a)btopenworld.com> wrote: > Morten Reistad wrote: > > [snip] > > > > > DEC _did_ come back with the alpha, just as soon as they had managed > > to deVAXify their brains. Except, by then the trust in the company had > > evaporated. > > The only sensible use for the Alpha was to run microcode as a VAX. > When chip manufacturing technology allowed CISC CPUs on a single chip > the cost advantages of RISC were over. That's entirely untrue, and ridiculous to boot. Anyone who has actually designed a CPU will tell you that there is an extra cost associated with CISCy architectures. All things being equal, I've heard estimates from those who would know (i.e. have implemented both CISC and RISC) as being in the 20-30% neighborhood. Currently, any possible performance delta is more than outweighed by the fact that x86 gets access to cutting edge processes a year in advance of every RISC familiy. A much more reasonable, and possibly true, assertion would be that the advantage of RISC architectures decreased over time. However, even as late as the Pentium 1, there was a huge advantage for RISC architectures. With the Pentium Pro that became less clear, although RISCs still ruled the roost for FP heavy applications. DK |