25 Oct
2018
25 Oct
'18
11:48 a.m.
On 10/25/18 11:06 AM, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:
Obviously, he returned to academia before the project
collapsed in a heap,
and he might have had to scramble and compete with other departing CS PhDs
(who would also have hung around too long). Many would probably be looking
at another job where microprocessor microcode, assembler, linker, compiler,
and system-level library development experience would have been highly
desirable, and perhaps where the EEs were more reasonable. Plus, he didn't
have to put "Served on what became the sunken shipwreck iAPX 432" on his
resume/CV. That's because it wasn't yet at the Sixth Phase in the Six
Phases of a Project, "Punishment of the Innocent, and Rewards for the
Non-Participants".
Sigh, I remember the 432 being talked up by "Fast Eddie" our Intel
inside sales guy. "Micro mainframe" will be the best thing since the
bread knife.
We began to get an inkling of trouble when we requested ballpark
estimates of the cost of the various chips (the 432 is not a single chip
microcomputer--the basic family, as I recall was no less than three
(43201, 43202 and 43203) QIP chips. The cost for the set given to us in
the range of 4 figures.
As time went on, Eddie talked less and less about this and then went
completely silent--his response was basically "you don't want to know".
I don't recall if this was before or after performance benchmark numbers
started to appear.
While this was a failure on a spectacular level, it was by no means the
only misstep by Intel. The i860 RISC CPU at one time was even being
endorsed by BillG as a possible personal computer basis. I think that
the follow-on, the i960 was somewhat successful.
One thing you need in this business is a good back-of-the-neck sense.
Sometime in the late 1970s, I was invited up to Beaverton by Tek to
interview for the position of project manager for their new color
graphics display terminal. I don't recall many technical details--it
was a one-day visit. Tek was enthusiastic about getting me on board and
had even scheduled the movers. About 4 days before they were set to
arrive, I called off the offer--I'd had a really terrible dream about
the project and couldn't shake the cold sweats.
It turned out that the project came in late and way above estimates for
Tek, with layoffs resulting. A bullet dodged by a dream.
--Chuck