Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:39:06 03/07/03
Go up one level in this thread
On March 07, 2003 at 10:34:16, Keith Evans wrote: >On March 06, 2003 at 18:23:59, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On March 06, 2003 at 17:47:45, Jeremiah Penery wrote: >> >>>On March 06, 2003 at 11:48:47, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>>On March 05, 2003 at 22:38:44, Jeremiah Penery wrote: >>>> >>>>>On March 05, 2003 at 18:26:10, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>The point of my comments is that Intel sets a sort of standard, and if someone >>>>>>follows along, >>>>>>but are not quite all there, it can cause problems. I had this problem with >>>>>>Cyrix years ago as >>>>>>their 387's were actually more accurate than Intel's, not to mention faster. >>>>>>And they would >>>>>>make every diagnostic program on the planet sound the alarm with floating point >>>>>>errors. :) >>>>>> >>>>>>And I got tired of the phone calls asking about it and quit recommending them. >>>>>>:) >>>>> >>>>>Why should a company be penalized for making a better product? >>>> >>>> >>>>Making a processor that is "PII-compatible" but really isn't, is "better"? >>>> >>>>My point. >>> >>>Please, Bob, you're forgetting to read again. You gave the example of Cyrix >>>being better, and being penalized for it. >> >>No. "better" is a relative term. If it is "better but incompatible" then it is >>ultimately >>not "better". Which was my point. AMD may well be faster than Intel. The K6 >>may >>have been faster than the PII. But it had a compatibility issue. >> > >In the distant past I worked at a company called Weitek that got into the Sparc >business. We made a chip that was basically second sourced by another >company, except that ours was "better." I forget how but you could enable >a mode where certain numeric instructions would execute faster then the >competition's part. Sun said - we don't like that, get rid of it. We don't >want somebody returning a machine because it has the slower part - every >machine needs to be identical to the end user. They also made a really good floating point processor. We had a few machines back in the 80's that had Weitek floating point hardware and they were fast compared to non-Weitek FP stuff.. And I am not talking about 80387-type co-processors of course... > >It was so obvious in retrospect, but I remember at the time engineers were >gloating about how we would crush the competition. And in the end it >was we who were crushed... > >Not exactly what you're talking about, but the definition of "better" isn't >always clear. > >Regards, >Keith
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