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0 pointsklelatti3y ago0 comments

Yes my first reaction was that the VAX would have been a much better architecture but Intel's manufacturing lead meant that it could churn out 286s (and of course 386s in 1985) at much lower cost.

Interesting to compare them both with the ARM1 which was 32 bit (no MMU) but only used 25k transistors on a 3 µm process - and which was more powerful than VAX 11/780. So both powerful and cheap to make.

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5 comments · 1 top-level

chasil3y ago· 4 in thread

I really don't understand why Acorn wasn't purchased outright as soon as the samples were back from the fab.

I think DEC was the first third-party implementation with StrongARM.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM

klelattiOP3y ago

Yes I think you're right on StrongARM which was the most powerful ARM CPU for a long time. Eventually made its way to Intel I think.

I think everyone eventually had their own RISC - IBM, HP, AMD, Intel (i960) plus MIPs and SPARC of course and a few others.

Arm eventually got traction because of the business model and because they intentionally didn't go head to head with the Intel x86 juggernaut. It wasn't obvious for a long time that their model would work though.

mek6800d23y ago

Your comment reminded me of Paul DeMone's signature line on USENET's comp.arch back in the day!

The 801 experiment SPARCed an ARMs race of EPIC proportions to put more PRECISION and POWER into architectures with MIPSed results but ALPHA's well that ends well.

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cbm-vic-203y ago

> StrongARM which was the most powerful ARM CPU for a long time. Eventually made its way to Intel I think.

DEC sued Intel for patent violations and won. Digital was dying, and part of the settlement was that Intel purchase the billion dollar chip fab in Hudson, Massachusetts that was just built to produce the chips, and later demolished it in 2015.

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KerrAvon3y ago

IIRC, StrongARM was the basis for XScale, which Intel foolishly spun off. They could have had a good chunk of the smartphone market, or at least a viable path into it.

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