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At least the 960 was somewhat usable. Many variants were created, and several were widely used in embedded products for quite a few years. The 860, however, was

At least the 960 was somewhat usable. Many variants were created, and several were widely used in embedded products for quite a few years. The 860, however, was Just Crap. Full stop. End of story. IIRC it had weird double-instruction modes that compilers just couldn't handle, and if you used them anyway (for very necessary performance) then handling exceptions properly was all but impossible. Definitely gets my vote for worst ever.

kps 4y ago
I worked on an unreleased third-party C compiler for the i860. It wasn't that compilers couldn't handle the double-issue float mode, it was more that it was worthless in real-world code due to the entry/exit latency. It had high performance on paper but not in reality, which was exactly the lesson that Intel did not learn for the Itanium.
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
I remember articles from Byte hyping it(the 860), also adverts for accelerator cards. It runs rings around workstations!
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Interesting that Intel has such an impressive record of failed designs. Itanium, 860, and iAPX 432 - all anti-classics of their time.
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