mas (mas769.delete@this.hotmail.com) on August 22, 2013 1:42 pm wrote:
> rwessel (robertwessel.delete@this.yahoo.com) on August 22, 2013 1:06 pm wrote:
> > mas (mas769.delete@this.hotmail.com) on August 22, 2013 1:19 am wrote:
> > > none (none.delete@this.none.com) on August 21, 2013 8:25 pm wrote:
> > > > mas (mas769.delete@this.hotmail.com) on August 21, 2013 6:10 pm wrote:
> > > > [...]
> > > > > Don't worry about Intel, it's big and ugly enough to take care of itself and the ARM competition
> > > > > will have done it and general consumers good in the long run just like AMD did. ARM is going to
> > > > > be celeronized eventually by better quality x86 cores but not before the cost of computing has been
> > > > > brought down considerably for World consumers. Why do you think Warren East left ARM, he knew the
> > > > > ARM mobile monopoly was finished as soon as Intel had got x86 into a phone form factor.
> > > >
> > > > I was wondering when your Intel cheerleading would be as
> > > > obvious in this tech forum as it is in financial ones.
> > >
> > > Glad I could meet your expectations. I just tell it like I see it and to me ARM is just a paper
> > > tiger whose bite will soon be shown to be quite toothless. Intel/Power make better performance
> > > processors and MIPS make more efficient processors, it is an accident of history ARM is where
> > > it is today but it will be corrected in time as herd hype will only take you so far.
> >
> >
> > Isn't x86's position only an accident of history as well? If not for IBM's selection of the
> > 8088 for the IBM PC, x86 would likely never have achieved it's current prominence. At the
> > time it was generally considered far inferior to some other designs, most notably 68K.
>
> Yes true and it was far inferior to IBM's own IBM 801 too. However x86 would not have been able to sustain
> its position if the x86 architecture had not been developed into the most potent for its personal computer
> market as that market has always had fierce competition. It's been fighting RISCs on and off since its birth
> in it, usually PowerPC but also ARM (now and back then), Sparc, Alpha and MIPS (using Workstation line of attack)
> as well as VLIW like Itanium/Crusoe. ARM has faced much less competition in its mobile markets but that is
> clearly changing now, let's see how it fares after a few years of Atom SoCs in the mobile landscape. I suspect
> Intel will end up with more of the mobile market than ARM does of the traditional PC/Server market.


AFAIK, IBM had no 801 implementations at that time that would have been remotely cost-competitive with the 808x or 68K. Nor was the 801 ISA all that great, character handling was the usual early RISC mess (although perhaps a little better than other). It would have required a 32-bit memory subsystem too.