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From: rjc@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: The 68050 - end of the 680x0? (was Re: The Amiga's Future)
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.083905.9329@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
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References: <rkushner.6517@sycom.UUCP> <01dH!cmr@cs.psu.edu> <1991Jun10.072945.8821@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 08:39:05 GMT
Lines: 110

In article <1991Jun10.072945.8821@neon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie) writes:
>melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes:
>
>>blitter to your computer).  The 50MHz 040 is due in 1Q 92.  The
>>article also says that the 68050 will be available sometime next year.
>>It will double the performance of the 040 at the same clock speed.
>
>  Actually, reading between the lines, this announcement sounds like
>the beginning of the end for the 680x0 line.  The article says that
>the '050 will be an evolutionary upgrade, using just improved process
>fabrication and a few small architectural changes to get its
>increased speed.  All in all, it sounds very much like the situation 
>with the 68030 vs 68020 - claimed "double the performance" with an
>evolutionary upgrade, which actually ended up with only 25-30% 
>improvement.
 
  The 68040 is 300% faster than the 030, I wouldn't start doomsaying
yet.

>  Why do I see this as the beginning of the end?  Well, by all accounts, 
>Intel's 80586 will be as revolutionary a chip from the 486 as the 386 
>was from the 286.  Reports of an i860 on board, superscalar processing
>etc seem to dominate any discussion of the 586.
> 
>  If Motorola is just planning an evolutionary upgrade for the 050, I
>can't see how this is going to compete head-to-head with the 586.

  Let's not engage in speculation of what the 050 will or will not be
based on a blurb. I don't know what Motorola is planning and I think
it's bad form to compare 2 chips before either of them have been
officially announced. The 040 just started shipping not too long ago, so
the 050 if it is to come out in only a year from now, will probably be
an evolutionary upgrade like you said, however, if Intel is planning
such drastic architecture changes the 586 may take a lot longer
and it will be a lot more expensive (with that i860 on board).
Intel is not the only company with RISC technology, Motorola
could just as easily slap an 88k onboard the 050.
  Still, I don't like this sort of speculation. Motorola may only
be discussing the 050 now, I bet designs aren't even on the board
yet, so they could still take any path from here. Intel and Motorola
have always seem to leapfrog each other in the past and chip performance
has been about equal (486 and 040 Specmarks are about the same, with a slight
integer performance advantage on the 486 side, and a slight floating point
advantage on the 040 side)
  What you may want to consider is, is this the end of CISC? I can't say.
I remember a few years ago when the same question was asked, and then the
CISC camp came back fighting with better chips (internal pipelining,
onboard cache, and faster instruction timings). It seems RISC is
back in the lead again.

>  My guess is that Motorola has been told by its major 68030/040 users
>that they're ready to switch away from the 680x0 family [e.g. NeXT,
>Apple with possibly the 88K, HP with their own PA RISC] for their
>high-end products, and so Motorola is not putting too much effort into
>designing high-end follow-ups to the 68040. 
>
>  What do you think?  Will the 68050 be the last high-end member of
>the 680x0 line?

  I really don't think so. Intel and Motorola's bread and butter in the
chips department come from the sales of vast quantities of the low-end
stuff. I think it's dangerous to change processors on machines
like PC's, Mac's, Amiga's, etc. You usually don't get source code
with software on these machines, so changing the processor will probably
fail when 100% of all previous software won't work on it. It's the same
effect that would happen if Apple did something like discard the MacOS
in favor of a new one (like AmigaDOS :) , yeah it's a joke)

 A P-CODE executable loader system makes softare CPU independent unfortunately
neither Amiga, Mac, or any of the other personal computers support
a system like this. Let's face it, the major selling point of the
Mac is it's OS and software. If Apple enters the high-end workstation
market with a new processor and architecture, they will be starting basically
scratch. I wouldn't want CBM to make the same mistake either.
(I don't think the A3000UX fits into thhis category. I think it fits into
the A/UX category since the A3000UX can run Amiga software, and is still
basically an Amiga.) Besides, I think Apple might ruin the concept of
a workstation by making it Macish. Workstations need to be
preemptive multitasking, multiuser, memory protected, resource tracking,
virtual memory, lots of disk space, and usuable from tty's and shells.

If Apple wants to spend their cash, let them spend it on better
manufacturing facilities (totally automated like the NeXT, and 
all the factories in Japan) so prices are cheaper. They could also
spend time working on multiprocessing and perhaps multiprocessing over
Macintosh networks. Be innovative and add to the computer
community rather than trying to enter a market that is already
populated with nice workstations trying to suck up more cash. I don't
think Apple would do anything in the workstation market except
take existing technology and chips, slap them into a new machine
and try to sell it with a large advertising campaign as an innovative
workstation.(They would probably copyright it too, and sue other
workstation vendors :) )

(oh yes, I know the 88k has loadable microcode)


  
>-- 
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Evan Torrie.  Stanford University, Class of 199?       torrie@cs.stanford.edu   
>"If it weren't for your gumboots, where would you be?   You'd be in the
>hospital, or in-firm-ary..."  F. Dagg


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