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> if intel's compilers and architecture had been stellar and provided a x5 or x10 improvement it would have caught on. That sounds like DEC Alpha to me, yet Al
by axiolite 1y ago
> if intel's compilers and architecture had been stellar and provided a x5 or x10 improvement it would have caught on.
That sounds like DEC Alpha to me, yet Alpha didn't take over the world. "Proprietary architecture" is a bad word, not something you want to base your future on. Without the Intel/AMD competition, x86 wouldn't have dominated for all these years.
- cameldrv 1y agoThe DEC Alpha actually did provide very good performance, and you could even run Windows NT on it. As far as I can tell, the biggest problem was just that Alpha systems were very expensive, and so they had a limited customer base. There were some quirks, but the main thing was just that you'd be paying $2000 for a PC and $10,000 for an Alpha based system, and most people didn't need the performance that badly.
- axiolite 1y ago> Alpha systems were very expensive, and so they had a limited customer base. That's the usual chicken & egg problem... If they sold more units, the prices would have come down. But people weren't buying many, because the prices were high. Itanium, like Alpha, or any other alternative architecture, would also have trouble and get stuck in that circle. x86-64, being a very inexpensive add-on to x86, managed to avoid that.