Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

In article <5jeh0n$7jg@huron.eel.ufl.edu> afn03257@freenet4.afn.org (Daniel P Hudson) writes:

   > "Nick Roberts" <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com> wrote:

   > >Daniel P Hudson <afn03257@freenet2.afn.org> wrote in article

   > >There was another contender: the Zilog Z8000 (yes, with three noughts).
   > >This was their 16-bit follow-up to their spectacularly successful Z80. It

   Technically, there was no such beast.  The two major Z8k chip
families were the Z8001 and Z8002, which addressed different amounts
of memory.  There was also a Z800 which was much more of a competitor
to the i8088. 

  > And what was its cost relation to the i8088? I'm asking because
  > I don't ctually know about this one. I do know the one Kaz
  > mentioned would have jacked the price of a PC up by about
  > $300-$1000.

  Get your story straight.  The 68k family member that would be
comparable to the 8088 was the 68008, with an 8-bit data path.  IBM
made a calculated decision based on availability.  The Intel delivery
promise on the 8088 was much better than from Motorola on the 68008.
It would have been nice if IBM had twigged to the real market, since
the 8-bit memory access was only an advantage if you had less than 64K
of memory.  Very few early PCs were sold with less, and IBM for
marketing reasons quickly upped the minimum configuration sold to
128K.

  > If you have a product that is obviously technically superior or
  > technically equivalent and cheaper, large corporations will
  > gladly hear your plea.You just have to take the initiative to
  > get off your ass and discuss it with them.

   I was in the business at the time, and the four way competition was
a real horse race. (The other early player for the 16-bit market was
National with the 16000, later named the 32000 series.)  National lost
out by being late with necessary support chips, and Zilog spent too
much effort on the Z800, which no one wanted, instead of on support
chips for the Z8000 family.  Intel and Motorola were neck and neck for
over a decade.  (Actually, they still are.  But Intel's RISCy designs
the i860 and i960, never got the internal support needed, while
Motorola got IBM (huh?) and Apple to commit to the PPC family.)

   Intel had PC clones for a volume driver, Motorola had Sun and later
Apple, Stratus, and Commodore.  (More 68K family processor chips went
into Amigas than into Macs, in part because Apple shifted to the Power
PC family, and in part because many Amigas had two 68K processors in
them, including the one I am typing this on, and the one I use at
home.)  Stratus was important only because of the volume of 68K
processor chips in one "computer."  The 600 series had 18 68010's per
processor board, two processor boards per logical processor, and often
several logical processors per system.  Much later, and still today,
the 68K family shows up in process control sytems.

  > You can believe what you want, but the pure and simple fact is
  > in business, friendship means nothing, IBM went with the best 
  > deal, not with the closest friend. IBM might have been willing
  > to pay a penny or two more per chip, but that wasn't the
  > difference between Intel's and most of the other competitors.

   CPU chip cost was a non-issue.  Delivery of the volume of chips IBM
needed was a major driver.  When the 80286 (IBM PC/AT) and 80386 chips
started shipping IBM was gobbling most of Intel's production for the
first year.  I don't remember the statistics on the 8088, but you
could ask Intel or IBM, since it is now a history question.  I seem to
remember that IBM bought over two-thirds of the 8088s made.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

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