Re: [?] Why should Distros be called as i386 for a 32-bit PC, and as amd64 for a 64-bit PC, when Intel Core PCs are also 64bit systems
On Mon, 15 Mar 2021 12:39:10 -0400
Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> wrote:
...
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 09:15:10AM +0100, Sven Hartge wrote:
> >Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> >> The IA64 architecture was a resounding success in one area tho: it
> >> killed most of the competition that was coming from "above" (at least
> >> DEC's Alpha, SGI's MIPS, HP's PA, and it likely sped up the demise of
> >> Sun's SPARC, I don't think it had much impact on POWER or PowerPC,
> >> OTOH) and thus helped open up the server (and supercomputer) market
> >> for Intel (and AMD).
> >
> >I think, IBM is big enough and old enough and established enough with
> >POWER that a "young whippersnapper" like Intel is no real danger to them
> >in their own enclosed Mainframe walled garden. I believe Apple moving
> >away from PowerPC did more damage to IBMs aspirations in that market.
>
> IBM didn't want to just be a mainframe manufacturer, they really wanted
> to amortize the costs for those CPUs against multiple product lines.
> They actually made a good number of high end computing sales for a few
> years by being the only player left standing, until amd64 just became
> too compelling. They still have some very large deployments, but their
> overall market share is not what they'd hoped for.
Apparently POWER is having a bit of a resurgence lately due to its
openness and non-x86ness:
https://www.osnews.com/story/133093/review-blackbird-secure-desktop-a-fully-open-source-modern-power9-workstation-without-any-proprietary-code/
Of course, Raptor seems to be a tiny player, and it's hard to see how
they'll get any traction since the pricing isn't very competitive,
apparently at least in part due to the chicken-and-egg market share
problem, but it's an exciting development to watch.
Celejar
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