3 Jun
2013
3 Jun
'13
7:25 p.m.
On 3 June 2013 23:59, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
Huh?
Define "failed".
OK then, I will.
None of the architectures you've listed has ever
tried
(at least not that I recall) to take over the low-end desktop market.
I beg to differ.
The Sony PS2, Sega Dreamcast and NEC Gamecube generation of consoles
were all (I think) based on derivatives of MIPS. They shipped tens of
millions of units, maybe hundreds of millions between them.
There were workstations - PC-bus workstations with BIOSes and limited
x86 compatibility - based on MIPS and Alpha. There were MIPS add-in
"accelerator" boards for x86 PCs.
There were SPARC laptops and low-end workstations.
And of course tons of all sorts from Apple based on PowerPC.
That all seems to me to count as a very serious attempt indeed to
muscle in on the low-end desktop turf: into the home, into the small
office, etc.
Then the next-gen consoles all went to PowerPC derivatives: the xBox
360, the Sony PS3's Cell, the Nintendo Wii - all PowerPC family.
Microsoft was buying truckloads of Apple G5 towers for its development
team.
And it didn't work. Apple led the exodus, jumping to its arch-enemy
Intel, soon dropping PPC code compatibility and offering a free,
built-in tool to dual-boot with Windows, while there is a /choice/ of
free hypervisors to run Windows under Mac OS X.
After Apple, the consoles followed: both the PS4 and xBox One will be x86 based.
IBM has pulled out of workstations and now only offers POWER servers
(and x86 ones).
Oracle has pulled out of workstations and now only offers SPARC
servers (and x86 ones).
HP has pulled out of workstations and now only offers Itanium servers
(and x86 ones).
Meantime, MIPS is coming back, amazingly, as an
even-lower-power-than-ARM offering from Imagination, the company that
makes PowerVR GPUs.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/17/us-imagination-mips-idUKBRE8BG09K2…
http://www.techhive.com/article/2029315/imagination-technologies-hopes-to-b…
three of the four are still current architectures.
Yes indeed they are, but they all tried to take on x86 in a variety of
markets, from sub-$500 devices to huge servers, and essentially, they
all lost. 2 are still kinda-sorta competitive in certain server
niches, nothing else. One is going for cellphones.
One of the four has been
spanking x86-based PCs in unit shipments for a long time.
Do tell. ARM outsells x86 about 10-to-1 but its *desktop* unit
shipments are on the order of hundreds of machines a year, mostly
running Acorn RISC OS.
I respectfully submit that you are wearing
"desktop blinders". I'm not at
all trying to argue with you here; I'm just saying that it sounds to me like
your only definition of "successful architecture" is "sold in mass-market
retail in a chassis that looks like a PC". That point of view seems odd to
me, as you asserted that PCs were "dead" just today.
[Tries very hard to be patient]
Stop putting words into my mouth.
I'm not saying PCs are dead. I am saying that PCs are just beginning
to transform into touchscreen-driven devices. The /mouse/ will be dead
and gone as a general-purpose mass-market input device within a few
years, and keyboards will be an optional extra for millions of users,
but PCs aren't going to disappear any time soon.
I won't touch the other flame bait.
I swear to you that I am not trying to flame-bait anyone or anything.
I am trying to give the best picture as I understand it.
--
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