Michael S (already5chosen.delete@this.yahoo.com) on February 3, 2013 2:40 am wrote:
> anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on February 2, 2013 10:21 pm wrote:
> > Richard Cownie (tich.delete@this.pobox.com) on February 2, 2013 6:55 pm wrote:
> > > Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxxx.xx) on February 2, 2013 6:31 pm wrote:
> > >
> > > > Intel's margins in the x86 business because they manage to deliver a win-win: better products
> > > > (performance, power) with lower production costs (area, yield) than the competition.
> > >
> > > Intel's competition in x86 has been constrained by the patent and licensing
> > > issues around the various versions of the x86 ISA.
> >
> > Yes, although we already demonstrated that this is a red herring for the purpose of discussing
> > competitiveness in non-x86 markets, by their way of taking much of the RISC/UNIX market.
> >
>
> You present it like RISC/UNIX server market was somehow established by 1996. It was not.

Well, depending on what you mean by "established". In 5 years time, we could look back and consider some markets of that time has not been established 5 years ago. Tablet, for example.

But that's not so important to my point, which is that x86 has been able to take RISC/UNIX market share (regardless of when the customer moved to unix, at least they moved from unix to x86).

> RISC/UNIX severs themselves were still in process of coming from below (workstations) and
> taking market share away from traditional non-RISC and/or non-UNIX minis and mainframes.
>
> Also back then the most common type of server was still a file
> server, where x86 (Novel Netware) was a dominant player.

Yes I suppose you're right about that too. I simplified, and of course the situation is not exactly the same as the looming ARM battle.