4 ms·
I wouldn't say "move away", I would say "augment their product line". What are the three? I can only think of two: IA64 and i960, but those weren't departures.
by sbf501 4y ago
I wouldn't say "move away", I would say "augment their product line".
What are the three? I can only think of two: IA64 and i960, but those weren't departures.
I worked on Itanium (and McKinely, and Madison). They were never intended for desktops. (In fact, back then there was still this notion of Desktop and Workstation, which is essentially dead today.)
The i960 was a fantastic CPU and I only know the wikipedia version of what happened to it, since it was before my time (well, they were producing it when I worked there, but I was ignorant of the climate). However, it was never a "move away from x86" product, it had great # of embedded customers. Again, never for desktops.
- klelatti 4y agoProbably iAPX 432 would be the third.
- sbf501 4y agoAccording to wikipedia this was before x86, so I don't think they were trying to "move away from x86" with this, since x86 didn't exist yet.
- klelatti 4y agoFair comment. I think it's fair to say though it was intended to be a move away from the main PC microprocessor line (which you can argue traced a path through 8080 to 8086 and beyond ) and ultimately replace it at the high end - so in spirit similar to Itanium even if not an 'x86 replacement'.
- hajile 4y agox86 traces it's DNA all the way back to the 8008 which led to the extended 8080 which led to the backward compatible 8085 then 8086 and the x86 architecture. 8008 was almost a full decade before the launch of the iAPX 432. The roots of x86 were in one of the first major ISAs ever created (and something like the 2nd or 3rd microprocessor architecture) which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.
- monocasa 4y agoThe 286 has big echoes of the 432 in it. Protected mode segmentation was very very inspired by the 432.
- oneplane 4y agoDidn't intel have a complete ARM XScale lineup before they sold it off?