Richard S (rsa73.delete@this.iinet.net.au) on June 2, 2022 5:14 pm wrote:
> Peter Lewis (peter.delete@this.notyahoo.com) on June 2, 2022 2:01 pm wrote:
> >
> > There was this project called Itanium ...
>
> Itanium had to do more than be purely about high performance or technical excellence though. It
> also had to be patentable, keep Intel's very high margins (by being difficult to clone) and was foundered
> on wrong assumptions about the increasing complexity of processors and the ability of compilers to
> create near perfect code. Unbelievably, they also appeared to think you could over take a market
> from the high end down when the history of processors is the low end maturing and growing into higher
> end markets, not the other way around (as x86 did, and ARM appear to be doing now).


In embedded world the pattern is opposite.
32-bit cores practically liquidated 16-bit cores back in 2nd half of 90s and in the last 15-20 years slowly eating into bigger and bigger portions of 8-bitters pie.
And 64-bitter replaced 32-bitters in "embedded-PC" segment.

The later is actually quite troublesome for our company - we have troubles finding replacement for Compact PCI host SBC that supports both 64-bit PCI data bus and 32-bit Windows.