-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Stewart Stremler wrote: > Don't be cheap, and pay for the technology that actually does some > research and innovation. Value given for value received and all that. > I've been quite satisfied with my 64-bit SPARC for many years now, > and haven't been able to out-type a machine in a lot longer than that.
I think you are being quite impractical here. One of the big reasons for the success of FOSS and the whole industry and economy based on it (things like Google) is that PC's are cheap and therefore ubiquitous. Hackers can now afford a cheap but powerful PC to connect to their cheap high speed net connection. And I think Intel/AMD have done quite a bit of research and innovation. They both do tons of R&D themselves with numerous huge labs. Lots of things have changed to get us from the original 4.77Mhz (I think) 8086 up to our modern dual-core 64 bit 3+Ghz monsters with dual crossbar switched Hypertransport busses etc. Alpha, PPC, and even Sparc have all been commercial failures compared to x86. So DEC got bought out and most others license out the technologies for their less-than-popular cpu's as another revenue stream so that we end up with the good stuff in our x86 cpu's anyhow. As I understand it some of the Alpha technology has been licensed for use in Intel and AMD cpu's. They both use IBM's SOI technology now. Sure, it's a classic case of VHS defeating BETA and I would have preferred it if the Sparc or Alpha or PPC chip had become the mass-produced commercial success that x86 has been such that we would all have them on our desktops. These cpu's were nowhere to be found back when it mattered. And had they existed back then we would probably be having the same debate now because they would now appear to be quite poorly designed with lots of features kludged on to keep them in the game just like x86 appears now. But when they did finally come along they played a very expensive proprietary game which ensured they never hit production volumes that make them a good deal when it comes to price/performance. "Value given for value received" may be more complicated than you think when you take into account economies of scale. How much you pay for your Sparc is directly related to how many of them are produced despite the fact that the performance of the cpu remains the same. - -- Tracy R Reed http://ultraviolet.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCgvrG9PIYKZYVAq0RAp7wAJ9fAE63IqGRfFBNyE6XGN3vN3jiBACffpNl NomYIbbzq5uv/agxvXkwxdU= =Qqp/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
