Summary of Request for Comparison of Altos and NCR

[Peter da Silva]

> 	- NCR announced a switch to Intel chips.  Motorola-based crud will
> 	  become white elephants.

RISC versus CISC aside, using the term "crud" to refer to the 680x0 by
comparison with the 80x86 makes me wonder about someone's sanity. Sure, the
intel chips are currently on the high end of the see-saw: but wait till
the 040 starts shipping in quantity. And what the compilers have to do
to get that performance make RISC compilers seem simple.

I think we need a new term for intel chips: IISC, "Insane Instruction
Set Computer". The 80386/80486 are almost civilised, but they're still
stuck with a highly inhomogenous register file.

We've got a 68000-based (yes, the old one) UNIX box that blows our 386
boxes out of the water. For multiuser use the surrounding hardware is
at least as important as the CPU.
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
peter at ferranti.com