With the Xeon 7600 line, Intel is finally using the 'R' word: RISC. It's targeting the mission-critical market dominated by Sun SPARC and IBM Power with the new chips, a first. Can the Xeon E7 processor deliver Intel's final blow to the RISC market, which includes its own Itanium?
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2009-03-17
Member since:2005-07-06
The same one I made in the original post with one caveat - without the need for BC, x86 would not dominate any market with the exception, perhaps, of the high end. Even there, x86 only dominates because the middle and low end pushed the x86 along and provided the money needed to do the R&D for high end chips. ANY PLACE BC ISN'T NEEDED EXCEPT THE HIGH END is now dominated by RISC, with the examples being set top boxes, consoles, handhelds, PDAs, netbooks, smart phones, etc. CLEARLY x86 only dominates in areas where BC is the major concern of BUSINESSES.
Member since:2005-07-06
It doesn't matter what made x86 chips better for the markets they dominate in*, the simple fact is that they are better.
*which is mostly: effects from economies of scale in one market making the chips better for few others; those effects (and overall the sort of evolutionary pressures acting also with technological "organisms") BC being often desirable are a simple facts of life.
Edited 2011-09-26 23:55 UTC
Member since:
2005-07-06
They coulda, shoulda, woulda, but they didn't.
Because businesses demanded BC. If IBM had picked anything other than the 8086/8088 for their first PCs, that would have been the main CPU today.