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> But it prevented them stepping back and designing a crude little 30K transistor RISC processor from a blank sheet - which later goes onto rule the world. It'
by kryptiskt 15y ago
> But it prevented them stepping back and designing a crude little 30K transistor RISC processor from a blank sheet - which later goes onto rule the world.
It's unfair to tick-tock to blame it for their failure to preempt ARM, it is far more recent than that. It's not that Intel hasn't tried to wean away folks from x86 with novel and innovative blank-sheet architectures. They tried with ipx432, i860 and Itanic, but all were expensive and well-deserved failures. It certainly seems like Intel engineers need the constraints of the x86 ISA to keep their wild impulses in check.
- fidotron 15y agoIt's not recent at all. Ironically the ARM exists at all because Intel wouldn't let anyone license the 286 design, and at one point Intel had a license to make StrongARMs, which they willingly gave up. Intel are simply an example of brute force in action.
- jasonwatkinspdx 15y agoIt's irrational to expect a business to get every decision about the future correct.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoThe irony is that Itanium is now a decent processor. But when it came out it was a trial of a new type of architecture (VLIW) and it made a lot of questionable tradeoffs for the time. Also, consider their many other big projects which have succeeded, such as Coppermine, Core2, etc.