Re: OoO execution (was: The Seymour Cray Era of Supercomputers)

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

We (Unisys) had some systems designed around the 88100 in
that time frame.   Apple's decision to go to PPC rather than
the 88110 caused us to evaluate all the current available
processors (SPARC, MIPS, x86, and PPC).    For rather pragmatic
reasons (the target machine used the Intel Paragon backplane),
the Pentium Pro was the ultimate choice, used to build the
OPUS family of massively parallel (yet single-system image)
computer systems.

Likewise, Data General's Aviion ( line of Unix workstations and
servers was based on the 88100, and I worked with them in 1990 and
1991.  When Motorola gave up the 88k line, DG gave up Motorola and
switched to Intel.  That worked for a while, but apparently they were
not successful enough with this line of business, and got bought by
EMC for DG's Clariion like of disk array storage products.  So going
for Intel was no Panacea, either.  It worked well enough to Unisys
survive, though.

- anton
--
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
  Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7-a594-88a85ac10d20o@googlegroups.com>