i432, i860, i960 (was: Re: Wanted: iAPX-432)

From: Ken Seefried <ken_at_seefried.com>
Date: Thu May 24 22:29:21 2001

So much silliness...

1) The iAPX-432 was released, and I've seen them in the wild. Why they
don't own the computing world has been hashed to death but more articulate
folks than I. They even show up from time to time on (horror, much gnashing
of teeth, devil incarnate) eBay. You, of course, blaspheme against the
Classiccmp gods if you ever look for one there, so we shouldn't even mention
it...

2) The i860 was a fascinating little chip, but in a train wreck sort of way.
In other words "it is horrible, and yet I cannot look away". The compiler
was miserable, the doco insufficient, but if you had a wonk that really
understood the beast, and had a single algorithm that you wanted to
implement, you could achieve magic. Many graphics processors worked this
magic.

3) The i960 was originally worked up for a next generation Intel mainstream
processor. It's definition included MMUs, etc., and it ended up in one of
Intels' supercomputers. Never quite worked out that way they hoped, though,
so the MMUs got deleted and the i960 found new life as an embedded
processor. There are a vast number of i960s out there in printers, network
card, RAID controllers, etc.

4) XTerminals. Nice toys. Contrary to one posters opinion, there was an
Xterm built around *everyones* processor, not just i960. I know of
XTerminals based on VAX, 34010/34020, 680[0234]0, MIPS, 88000, i960, i860 &
i80[2345]86. They aren't exactly rocket science.

Ken
Received on Thu May 24 2001 - 22:29:21 BST