24 Sep
2022
24 Sep
'22
5:27 a.m.
I always thought the i960 was an upgrade to the i860
(sort of like i386 to i486 upgrade). However, based on the info on wiki it seems as if the
i960 actually came first and although a RISC chip it was in no way in the same league as
the i860. Anyone can clarify or verify this?
I'm not even sure I'd call them
related. The i960 is a very different, almost
"normal" RISC chip compared to the i860, though it uses Berkeley register
windows like SPARC. It has excellent XOR performance, so it got used a lot
later on in RAID arrays (my Apple Network Server 500 has a RAID card with an
i960 on it). A few systems used it and it was popular in military applications
but it never achieved its potential mostly due to internal politics at Intel --
not because it sucked -- and the DEC StrongARM settlement mostly put a stake
through it.
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