HP & Compaq

From: Carlos Murillo <cmurillo_at_emtelsa.multi.net.co>
Date: Tue Sep 4 11:55:02 2001

At 09:04 AM 9/4/01 -0400, you wrote:
>> It sure makes me worry about the future of the HP-RISC line. (Although
>> the new Intel technology may have already sealed its death warrant.)
>
>The plan was IA-64 which is why HP helped develop the chip.
>PA-RISC is dead... or would've been had they not have had to resurrect
>it because of delays on IA-64.
>Bill

Lots of the key architectural features in IA64 (if not most) are actually HP's
intellectual property. IA64 is, in a sense, what HP was already
developing as the sucessor of PA-RISC many years ago, with important,
patented new features (such as multi-instruction set architecture
and the related instruction set-switching mechanism, which is
the main thing that Intel was after) coupled with Intel's
advanced production processes. Oh, and some extras to accomodate
Intel's demands (the main reason for the delays).

HP needed better production technology than what they had in
order for their new chip design to stick. The choices were DEC,
Intel and IBM. Guess what happened.

carlos.


--------------------------------------------------------------
Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo_at_nospammers.ieee.org
Received on Tue Sep 04 2001 - 11:55:02 BST