A sociologist's take on Intel monopoly

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A Japanese sociologist explored the legal and psychological basis of
Intel's monopolistic practices. Some interesting quotes:

By allowing a competitor into the market, the exit cost for the
incumbent is small and may, in fact, prevent the entry of a stronger
firm. This is a strategy that Intel appeared to have adopted with
regards to laptops: we would suggest that the appearance of Transmeta
Crusoe machines in the Sony lineup was not disputed by Intel in the
hope of preventing the stronger competitor - AMD - from gaining a
foothold there. That, however, is speculation.

Relating these theories of monopoly back to the real world
requires a little more thought. Intel clearly conceded some product
space to AMD to allow it to enter the market with its low-end
processors such as the K5 and K6, back in the day. The weak firm,
however, has grown strong enough to compete by expanding its product
line to include high-end processors such as the Athlon, and, today,
cutting-edge technology like the Opteron. As AMD entered the high-end,
Intel monopolised rather than conceded and saturated the market with
offerings for every conceivable type of product. Arai suggests that it
is especially important to watch for monopolisation by any company with
multiple differentiated product lines, since this offers ample
opportunity for such anti-competitive acts as predatory pricing. That
would appear to be born out by the facts of this case.

Intel's monopolistic practices explored
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21716

 

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YKhan <yjkhan@gmail.com> wrote:
> A Japanese sociologist explored the legal and
> psychological basis of Intel's monopolistic practices.

Hunh? Wouldn't the economics be paramount?

>

Relating these theories of monopoly back to the real
> world requires a little more thought. Intel clearly conceded
> some product space to AMD to allow it to enter the market with
> its low-end processors such as the K5 and K6, back in the day.

low-end? IIRC, both the AMD K5 & K6 blew away their Intel
competition (486 & Pentium) on both technical and especially
cost-effectiveness. Intel was forced to react with proprietary
Sockets & Slots. The [NexGen?] K6 is so good that it lasted to
compete against PentiumPro and PentiumII and the essence of this
core is still apparent in the K7 & K8.

The shrink should stick to people. It's not nice to make up
facts to make theories work.

-- Robert

 

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Robert Redelmeier wrote:
> YKhan <yjkhan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>A Japanese sociologist explored the legal and
>>psychological basis of Intel's monopolistic practices.
>
>
> Hunh? Wouldn't the economics be paramount?

Well, it is an institute devoted to both.

> low-end? IIRC, both the AMD K5 & K6 blew away their Intel
> competition (486 & Pentium) on both technical and especially
> cost-effectiveness. Intel was forced to react with proprietary
> Sockets & Slots. The [NexGen?] K6 is so good that it lasted to
> compete against PentiumPro and PentiumII and the essence of this
> core is still apparent in the K7 & K8.

Well, I do have few quibbles myself on his description of the
processors. Towards the end K6 was strictly a Celeron competitor until
AMD got the Athlon ready.

> The shrink should stick to people. It's not nice to make up
> facts to make theories work.

Actually, I think this guy was probably commissioned by the JFTC
considering that he must've gotten advanced copies of the JFTC findings
-- his report was filed Feb 17th apparently, because the filename is
"Arai_Feb_17.pdf", but the charges didn't get filed against Intel until
late last week. This guy's work is likely to find its way into the court
case that will happen against Intel.

Yousuf Khan

 

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Robert Redelmeier wrote:

>low-end? IIRC, both the AMD K5 & K6 blew away their Intel
>competition (486 & Pentium) on both technical and especially
>cost-effectiveness.

You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the Pentiums of the
time, and the K6 BARELY edged-out (by about 4%) the Pentium in integer
performance, despite the benefit of having twice the L1 cache. Plus,
the Pentium kicked the K6 around the block where it really mattered,
floating-point performance.

In short, was the K6 a better value than the Pentium? For many
people, sure. Was it technically superior? Nope.

>Intel was forced to react with proprietary
>Sockets & Slots.

There were good reasons for the slot. AMD did a slot too, you know.

>The [NexGen?] K6 is so good that it lasted to
>compete against PentiumPro and PentiumII and the essence of this
>core is still apparent in the K7 & K8.

Sounds like someone loves the AMD Corporation.

 

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Robert Redelmeier wrote:
> chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> > You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the
> > Pentiums of the time
>
> Certainly. But the K5 wasn';t aimed at the original
> Pentiums. It was targetted against the 486 which Intel
> had to kill prematurely as a result.

No, the AMD 5x86 was aimed against the 486's, it fit into the 486
sockets. The K5 was aimed against the Pentium Classic, it fit into its
socket. AMD never got any decent ramp up of this processor, and
therefore it brought the K6 up quickly. The K6 was the processor
previously being designed by NexGen Technologies before they were
bought by AMD.

The K6 was actually a very good processor, but it was designed to
compete against Pentium Classic and Pentium MMX, at a time when Intel
was migrating over to the P6 architecture, 6th generation architecture.
K6 was at best a 5.5th generation architecture, so it was behind the
P6's.

The K7 Athlon actually played a leapfrog on Intel's P6 architecture
(which at that point was represented by Pentium 3), and it was still
able to give Intel's 7th generation Pentium 4 a huge headache for most
of its lifecycle. But then again, we now know that even Intel's own 6th
generation (now represented by Pentium-M) is also still able to give
its own 7th generation a beating.

Yousuf Khan

 

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chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the
> Pentiums of the time

Certainly. But the K5 wasn';t aimed at the original
Pentiums. It was targetted against the 486 which Intel
had to kill prematurely as a result.

> There were good reasons for the slot. AMD did a slot
> too, you know.

Yes, but slots are no more, and it wasn't about slots that
I was talking, but about proprietary CPU/mobo interfaces.

> Sounds like someone loves the AMD Corporation.

No, I like Intel too. I like to recognize quality
wherever it is found. Intel has _great_ process.
But the P7 (Pentium4) was a horrible stop-gap made
necessary by the failure of IA64 (Itanium).

-- Robert

 

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On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:34:43 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

>YKhan <yjkhan@gmail.com> wrote:
>>

Relating these theories of monopoly back to the real
>> world requires a little more thought. Intel clearly conceded
>> some product space to AMD to allow it to enter the market with
>> its low-end processors such as the K5 and K6, back in the day.
>
>low-end? IIRC, both the AMD K5 & K6 blew away their Intel
>competition (486 & Pentium) on both technical and especially
>cost-effectiveness. Intel was forced to react with proprietary
>Sockets & Slots. The [NexGen?] K6 is so good that it lasted to
>compete against PentiumPro and PentiumII and the essence of this
>core is still apparent in the K7 & K8.

The K6 did very well against the PentiumMMX, but it was released
almost exactly one month to the day before Intel brought out the
Pentium II (K6 was released in April of '97, the PII was released in
May of '97). From that point on, AMD was relegated to competing on
the low-end with the K6 and it's follow-ups.

The same was largely true with the K5. While it competed very well
with the low-end Pentiums, by the time it actually started shipping in
PR75 and PR90 forms (early to mid '96), Intel was selling Pentium 150
and 166MHz chips. Intel hit 200MHz before AMD managed to release a
PR100 chip.

While AMD's chips did compete well at the low-end due to their price,
neither the K5 or the K6 was very competitive on the high-end when
compared to Intel's offerings of the day. It wasn't until the Athlon
came out that AMD really had a high-end competitor.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

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On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 19:14:01 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

>chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the
>> Pentiums of the time
>
>Certainly. But the K5 wasn';t aimed at the original
>Pentiums. It was targetted against the 486 which Intel
>had to kill prematurely as a result.

Check your time table! The K5 didn't see light of day until *THREE
YEARS* after Intel had released the Pentium. Even the PPro was
shipping before the K5 made it to market. The 486 was long-dead by
that time!

>> There were good reasons for the slot. AMD did a slot
>> too, you know.
>
>Yes, but slots are no more, and it wasn't about slots that
>I was talking, but about proprietary CPU/mobo interfaces.

True enough, this was an important part of the court decision between
Intel and AMD. That being said, Intel DID have a very valid argument
here. They did do the design of the interface and they patented their
technology and it was a perfectly legitimate patent. AMD was on VERY
shaky legal grounds to begin with by using the Pentium bus, with the
PPro bus they just didn't have a leg to stand on.

Of course, in the end it may have turned out for the best as it forced
AMD to look elsewhere, and the resulting Alpha EV6 bus that they
licensed was a superior architecture anyway. It also laid the
foundation for AMD to develop their own Hypertransport bus, which is a
VERY nice design. Simple, flexible, extremely economical but still
very effective.

>> Sounds like someone loves the AMD Corporation.
>
>No, I like Intel too. I like to recognize quality
>wherever it is found. Intel has _great_ process.
>But the P7 (Pentium4) was a horrible stop-gap made
>necessary by the failure of IA64 (Itanium).

While this may best be a discussion left for another thread, but IMO
the P4's failing was more due to the fact that Intel tried to solve a
problem that didn't exist. It seems like they had some study group
that decided the ONE application everyone was going to be doing in
2000 was a HUGE amount of multimedia streaming. They then went about
designing a chip that would be very good at streaming all sorts of
multimedia content and to hell with everything else because multimedia
streaming was to be the one and only thing that people would care
about.

Of course, the reality is that there is only so much multimedia
streaming that people really do, and the P4 turned out to be somewhat
lackluster in other areas. It's by no means a weak chip, just perhaps
less than ideal for the work that most of us do in the real world.
Intel's little fantasy world of massing streaming media just doesn't
interest most people.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

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chrisv wrote:
> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the Pentiums of the
> time, and the K6 BARELY edged-out (by about 4%) the Pentium in integer
> performance, despite the benefit of having twice the L1 cache. Plus,
> the Pentium kicked the K6 around the block where it really mattered,
> floating-point performance.

The K6 was hardly kicked around the block in floating point performance,
that was the Cyrix 6x86. The K6 was maybe 70-90% the performance of P5
and P6 at floating point clock-for-clock; which most people wouldn't
even notice except in benchmarks. The K6 overhauled the P5 in floating
point performance once its clocks rose up higher than P5. But the P6 &
K6 kept up with each other in Mhz for the most part, therefore the K6
was never able to overhaul the P6 in floating point.

Yousuf Khan

 

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Tony Hill wrote:

>On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 19:14:01 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
><redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:
>
>>chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the
>>> Pentiums of the time
>>
>>Certainly. But the K5 wasn';t aimed at the original
>>Pentiums. It was targetted against the 486 which Intel
>>had to kill prematurely as a result.
>
>Check your time table! The K5 didn't see light of day until *THREE
>YEARS* after Intel had released the Pentium.

The 5V Pentium, you mean. The K5 was certainly out and competing
with the first "real" Pentiums, the P90-P133 series.

 

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Yousuf Khan wrote:

>chrisv wrote:
>> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the Pentiums of the
>> time, and the K6 BARELY edged-out (by about 4%) the Pentium in integer
>> performance, despite the benefit of having twice the L1 cache. Plus,
>> the Pentium kicked the K6 around the block where it really mattered,
>> floating-point performance.
>
>The K6 was hardly kicked around the block in floating point performance,
>that was the Cyrix 6x86. The K6 was maybe 70-90% the performance of P5
>and P6 at floating point clock-for-clock; which most people wouldn't
>even notice except in benchmarks.

Arguable, but FOR SURE no one could notice the K6's meager
integer-performance advantage without a benchmark.

I'm just amazed that the "K6 blew-away the Pentium" myth is so
persistent. There was never any evidence to support it.

>The K6 overhauled the P5 in floating
>point performance once its clocks rose up higher than P5. But the P6 &
>K6 kept up with each other in Mhz for the most part, therefore the K6
>was never able to overhaul the P6 in floating point.
>
> Yousuf Khan

 

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Tony Hill wrote:

>The K6 did very well against the PentiumMMX, but it was released
>almost exactly one month to the day before Intel brought out the
>Pentium II (K6 was released in April of '97, the PII was released in
>May of '97). From that point on, AMD was relegated to competing on
>the low-end with the K6 and it's follow-ups.

The K6-III did pretty well performance-wise, but the price never came
down enough for it to gain wide-spread appeal. A lot of people said
"just as fast as a PII for (a bit) less money", but they were missing
the point, which was that the Celerons with on-chip L2 kept-up with
both the K6-III and the PII, and for A LOT less money. The Celerons
were by FAR the best bang/buck for a while, there...

 

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On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 14:02:12 -0600, chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid>
wrote:

>Tony Hill wrote:
>
>>Check your time table! The K5 didn't see light of day until *THREE
>>YEARS* after Intel had released the Pentium.
>
>The 5V Pentium, you mean. The K5 was certainly out and competing
>with the first "real" Pentiums, the P90-P133 series.

The P90 was released in March of 1994. The K5 was released in March
of 1996, a full two years later. Intel released their Pentium 200MHz
before AMD hit PR100 with the K5.

Face it, the K5 was WAY too little too late!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

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Tony Hill wrote:

>On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 14:02:12 -0600, chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid>
>wrote:
>
>>Tony Hill wrote:
>>
>>>Check your time table! The K5 didn't see light of day until *THREE
>>>YEARS* after Intel had released the Pentium.
>>
>>The 5V Pentium, you mean. The K5 was certainly out and competing
>>with the first "real" Pentiums, the P90-P133 series.
>
>The P90 was released in March of 1994. The K5 was released in March
>of 1996, a full two years later. Intel released their Pentium 200MHz
>before AMD hit PR100 with the K5.
>
>Face it, the K5 was WAY too little too late!

No argument there...

 

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Tony Hill wrote:
> The P90 was released in March of 1994. The K5 was released in March
> of 1996, a full two years later. Intel released their Pentium 200MHz
> before AMD hit PR100 with the K5.

That's not right, the Pentium was puttering around 133Mhz when the K5
PR100 was released. Then when the Pentium 166 came out, K5 was just
trying to reach out to PR133. So it was maybe a speed level back, but
not as big of a jump back as 100 vs. 200.

Actually, when the Pentium reached 200Mhz, it was greeted with a real
(no-PR) 200Mhz K6. I remember the K6 launch pretty well, the K6 was
launched at 166, 200, and 233Mhz. However that 233Mhz was pretty much a
paper-launch.

Yousuf Khan

 

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In article <dho9311698o9cb5ig3gulm1s3apmadn1v2@4ax.com>,
Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> writes:
> On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 14:53:56 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com>
> wrote:
>
>>chrisv wrote:
>>> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the Pentiums of the
>>> time, and the K6 BARELY edged-out (by about 4%) the Pentium in integer
>>> performance, despite the benefit of having twice the L1 cache. Plus,
>>> the Pentium kicked the K6 around the block where it really mattered,
>>> floating-point performance.
>>
>>The K6 was hardly kicked around the block in floating point performance,
>>that was the Cyrix 6x86. The K6 was maybe 70-90% the performance of P5
>>and P6 at floating point clock-for-clock;
>
> Compared to the P5, the K6 was pretty close, but it tended to get
> kicked around pretty badly when compared to the P6. Now, I suppose
> one could argue that the 20-50% improvement in floating point
> performance for the P6 vs. P5 was as much to do with the memory
> subsystem as anything else, the end result was the same.
>
It's worth noting that floating point performance was a niche market
until Quake hit the market. Suddenly FP was for the masses. Plus the
"free" FXCH Quake's inner render loop favored the Intel chips. Of
course shortly after, everthing then went OpenGL, and perhaps (but only
perhaps) became a little less FP sensitive.

Dale Pontius

 

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On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:16:45 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com>
wrote:

>Tony Hill wrote:
>> The P90 was released in March of 1994. The K5 was released in March
>> of 1996, a full two years later. Intel released their Pentium 200MHz
>> before AMD hit PR100 with the K5.
>
>That's not right, the Pentium was puttering around 133Mhz when the K5
>PR100 was released. Then when the Pentium 166 came out, K5 was just
>trying to reach out to PR133. So it was maybe a speed level back, but
>not as big of a jump back as 100 vs. 200.

According to www.sandpile.org, we get the following numbers:

K5 Pentium
March '94 P90 and P100
March '95 P120
June '95 P133
Jan. '96 P150 and P166
March '96 PR75 and PR90
June '96 P200
Oct. '96 PR100,120,133
Jan. '97 PR166


>Actually, when the Pentium reached 200Mhz, it was greeted with a real
>(no-PR) 200Mhz K6. I remember the K6 launch pretty well, the K6 was
>launched at 166, 200, and 233Mhz. However that 233Mhz was pretty much a
>paper-launch.

233 was definitely a paper launch, but it wasn't until April of '97,
almost a year after the Pentium 200 was released and only one month
before the PII233, 266 and 300MHz chips were released (albeit at a
MUCH higher cost for both the chip and platform than what AMD was
charging, hence the reason why the K6 was a decently good success
story for AMD).

Here are the press releases for those two chips:

K6 at 166, 200 and 233MHz:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543_555~972,00.html


PII at 233, 266 and 300MHz:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/DP050797.HTM


Unfortunately neither company has press releases on their websites
from before '97, but Sandpile is a rather reliable source of info for
these chips.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

[Ed]

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On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:16:45 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:

>Tony Hill wrote:
>> The P90 was released in March of 1994. The K5 was released in March
>> of 1996, a full two years later. Intel released their Pentium 200MHz
>> before AMD hit PR100 with the K5.
>
>That's not right, the Pentium was puttering around 133Mhz when the K5
>PR100 was released. Then when the Pentium 166 came out, K5 was just
>trying to reach out to PR133. So it was maybe a speed level back, but
>not as big of a jump back as 100 vs. 200.
>
>Actually, when the Pentium reached 200Mhz, it was greeted with a real
>(no-PR) 200Mhz K6. I remember the K6 launch pretty well, the K6 was
>launched at 166, 200, and 233Mhz. However that 233Mhz was pretty much a
>paper-launch.
>
> Yousuf Khan


Price flash backs (in stock)
http://tinyurl.com/5ysj6

Ed

 

[keith]

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On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:31:40 -0500, dale wrote:

> In article <dho9311698o9cb5ig3gulm1s3apmadn1v2@4ax.com>,
> Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> writes:
>> On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 14:53:56 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>chrisv wrote:
>>>> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the Pentiums of the
>>>> time, and the K6 BARELY edged-out (by about 4%) the Pentium in integer
>>>> performance, despite the benefit of having twice the L1 cache. Plus,
>>>> the Pentium kicked the K6 around the block where it really mattered,
>>>> floating-point performance.
>>>
>>>The K6 was hardly kicked around the block in floating point performance,
>>>that was the Cyrix 6x86. The K6 was maybe 70-90% the performance of P5
>>>and P6 at floating point clock-for-clock;
>>
>> Compared to the P5, the K6 was pretty close, but it tended to get
>> kicked around pretty badly when compared to the P6. Now, I suppose
>> one could argue that the 20-50% improvement in floating point
>> performance for the P6 vs. P5 was as much to do with the memory
>> subsystem as anything else, the end result was the same.
>>
> It's worth noting that floating point performance was a niche market
> until Quake hit the market. Suddenly FP was for the masses. Plus the
> "free" FXCH Quake's inner render loop favored the Intel chips. Of
> course shortly after, everthing then went OpenGL, and perhaps (but only
> perhaps) became a little less FP sensitive.

It's also worth noting that Cyrix started out in the 8087 FP business, but
no one cared about FP at the time.

--
Keith

 

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On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 22:07:59 -0500, keith <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:

>On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:31:40 -0500, dale wrote:
>

<snip>

>>>
>> It's worth noting that floating point performance was a niche market
>> until Quake hit the market. Suddenly FP was for the masses. Plus the
>> "free" FXCH Quake's inner render loop favored the Intel chips. Of
>> course shortly after, everthing then went OpenGL, and perhaps (but only
>> perhaps) became a little less FP sensitive.
>
>It's also worth noting that Cyrix started out in the 8087 FP business, but
>no one cared about FP at the time.

*No one*?

AMD introduced the world to floating point coprocessors for
microprocessors in 1979 with the 9511, and I believe they were making
non-x87 coprocessors into the 1990's. Floating point was definitely
not for the masses, though.

RM

 

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keith <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
> It's also worth noting that Cyrix started out in the 8087
> FP business, but no one cared about FP at the time.

No one? Shortly after getting my first 8088 PC, I got
an i8087. All our work machines had them. They made
large Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets workable. For us, 1-2-3
was the killer PC app.

I don't rememeber Cyrix 8087, but I do have one of
their 287 chips. Also very nice.

-- Robert

 

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On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 13:57:10 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

>keith <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
>> It's also worth noting that Cyrix started out in the 8087
>> FP business, but no one cared about FP at the time.
>
>No one? Shortly after getting my first 8088 PC, I got
>an i8087. All our work machines had them. They made
>large Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets workable. For us, 1-2-3
>was the killer PC app.
>
>I don't rememeber Cyrix 8087, but I do have one of
>their 287 chips. Also very nice.

I got a 80Cx87 the day it was announced as "available" - I believe it's
still lurking in the basement somewhere... along with a couple of Definicon
cards. It was nothing special in the way of performance improvement
over an i8087, on our stuff. As often happens with those kinds of things,
they had added a memory mapped mode (if I recall the specs accurately)
which was obviously inaccessible to anyone using a compiler. I dunno why
they bothered.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

 

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In article <pan.2005.03.18.03.07.58.182413@att.bizzzz>,
keith <krw@att.bizzzz> writes:
> On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:31:40 -0500, dale wrote:
>
>> In article <dho9311698o9cb5ig3gulm1s3apmadn1v2@4ax.com>,
>> Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>> On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 14:53:56 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>chrisv wrote:
>>>>> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the Pentiums of the
>>>>> time, and the K6 BARELY edged-out (by about 4%) the Pentium in integer
>>>>> performance, despite the benefit of having twice the L1 cache. Plus,
>>>>> the Pentium kicked the K6 around the block where it really mattered,
>>>>> floating-point performance.
>>>>
>>>>The K6 was hardly kicked around the block in floating point performance,
>>>>that was the Cyrix 6x86. The K6 was maybe 70-90% the performance of P5
>>>>and P6 at floating point clock-for-clock;
>>>
>>> Compared to the P5, the K6 was pretty close, but it tended to get
>>> kicked around pretty badly when compared to the P6. Now, I suppose
>>> one could argue that the 20-50% improvement in floating point
>>> performance for the P6 vs. P5 was as much to do with the memory
>>> subsystem as anything else, the end result was the same.
>>>
>> It's worth noting that floating point performance was a niche market
>> until Quake hit the market. Suddenly FP was for the masses. Plus the
>> "free" FXCH Quake's inner render loop favored the Intel chips. Of
>> course shortly after, everthing then went OpenGL, and perhaps (but only
>> perhaps) became a little less FP sensitive.
>
> It's also worth noting that Cyrix started out in the 8087 FP business, but
> no one cared about FP at the time.
>
And then Cyrix went on to make the M1, notoriously weak in the FP
department. (I still have an M1 running, though I've offloaded all
the work, and will pull the plug when I get a round tuit and decide
I don't mind if the 3.2G Deskstar gets a case of stiction.)

Dale

 

[keith]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 13:57:10 +0000, Robert Redelmeier wrote:

> keith <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
>> It's also worth noting that Cyrix started out in the 8087
>> FP business, but no one cared about FP at the time.
>
> No one? Shortly after getting my first 8088 PC, I got
> an i8087. All our work machines had them. They made
> large Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets workable. For us, 1-2-3
> was the killer PC app.

Well, almost no one. ;-) I had one, mainly because I didn't have to pay
for it (they, along with more memory chips than you could count, were
going in the trash by the bucket-load;-).

> I don't rememeber Cyrix 8087, but I do have one of their 287 chips. Also
> very nice.

Finger cramp. I meant to type x86.

--
Keith

 

[keith]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 17:09:45 -0500, dale wrote:

> In article <pan.2005.03.18.03.07.58.182413@att.bizzzz>,
> keith <krw@att.bizzzz> writes:
>> On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:31:40 -0500, dale wrote:
>>
>>> In article <dho9311698o9cb5ig3gulm1s3apmadn1v2@4ax.com>,
>>> Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>>> On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 14:53:56 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>chrisv wrote:
>>>>>> You recall wrong. The K5 was weak, compared to the Pentiums of the
>>>>>> time, and the K6 BARELY edged-out (by about 4%) the Pentium in integer
>>>>>> performance, despite the benefit of having twice the L1 cache. Plus,
>>>>>> the Pentium kicked the K6 around the block where it really mattered,
>>>>>> floating-point performance.
>>>>>
>>>>>The K6 was hardly kicked around the block in floating point performance,
>>>>>that was the Cyrix 6x86. The K6 was maybe 70-90% the performance of P5
>>>>>and P6 at floating point clock-for-clock;
>>>>
>>>> Compared to the P5, the K6 was pretty close, but it tended to get
>>>> kicked around pretty badly when compared to the P6. Now, I suppose
>>>> one could argue that the 20-50% improvement in floating point
>>>> performance for the P6 vs. P5 was as much to do with the memory
>>>> subsystem as anything else, the end result was the same.
>>>>
>>> It's worth noting that floating point performance was a niche market
>>> until Quake hit the market. Suddenly FP was for the masses. Plus the
>>> "free" FXCH Quake's inner render loop favored the Intel chips. Of
>>> course shortly after, everthing then went OpenGL, and perhaps (but only
>>> perhaps) became a little less FP sensitive.
>>
>> It's also worth noting that Cyrix started out in the 8087 FP business, but
>> no one cared about FP at the time.
>>
> And then Cyrix went on to make the M1, notoriously weak in the FP
> department.

E=Precisely because "no one" cared about x87 performance. ...(as you
pointed out), until Quake.

> (I still have an M1 running, though I've offloaded all
> the work, and will pull the plug when I get a round tuit and decide
> I don't mind if the 3.2G Deskstar gets a case of stiction.)

I think I gave my last one away (though perhaps have an M2 somewhere). I
should have kept it for the "archive". If I can find one laying around,
perhaps I should put it in the 1590 I have sitting on the shelf. I think I
have a couple of SP-97s laying around here somewhere too.

--
Keith