4 Jun
2013
4 Jun
'13
9:10 a.m.
On 06/04/2013 11:43 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
Of course. But why I said what I said above, out of exasperation, is that
you call architectures that are currently developed, sold, and used, and have
been for decades, with no end in sight, "failures". That's insane.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
This is
nuts. "Failed"?? Why? Because they're not used as the processors
in iPads and eMachines PCs?
I'm sorry but, I think you've finally lost it.
[Sigh]
And once again, Dave, you go off on one because someone sees things
differently from you.
Any mass-produced product, be it a car or a CPU, need a significant,
sustained market share to prosper & continue being developed. If it
drops below a certain % of the market, it stops making enough money
for it to be worth continuing development. And remember, CPUs are
insanely expensive to manufacture, not to mention design.
This is not a conspiracy theory, it is simple economics.
If nobody else uses Brand X CPU and the manufacturer and vendor of
Brand X also offers systems with Brand Y, which outsells Brand X by
100? over and has thus got 100? the R&D budget, then customers are
going to wonder why Brand X is worth so much money and if it's so
good, why does Vendor X also offer Brand Y? After all, vendors A
through to Z /also/ offer Brand Y and they seem to do fine. What is so
special about Brand X? Why should I pay more for it?
So they don't. They go with the safe choice, the choice everyone else is making.
And Brand X's revenues fall further, until there is no more investment
in it because it's not returning it, and then it dies.
It happened with Alpha, it happened with Itanium (and umpteen other
CPU lines from Intel and Motorola alone) and if they are not careful
it will happen with SPARC and POWER.
Sure, they may continue on as little cheap embedded chips, making
decent money, but it will bring us even closer to a monoculture on the
server end of things, as today, we have a complete monoculture in
desktops and laptops.