Acorn’s original ARM chip was impressive but it didn’t really capture much market share. The first ARM CPU competed against the 286, and did win. The 386 was a big deal though. First, software was very expensive at the time, and the 386 allowed people to keep their investments. Second, it really was a powerful chip. It allowed 11mips vs ARM3’s 13, but the 486 achieved 54mips. ARM6 only hit 28mips. It’s worth noting that the 386 also used 32bit memory addressing and a 32 bit bus while ARM was 26bit addressing with a 16 bit bus.
At the same time, it had unquestioned performance dominance until ARM made the decision for embedded.
ARM would have been much more influential under Intel, rather than pursuing the i960 or the iAPX 432.
Just imagine Intel ARM Archimedes. It would have crushed the IBM PS/2.
Whoops.
Seriously, even DEC was smart enough.
> Acorn produced a 32-bit CPU with a 25k transistor count. The 80386 was years later, with 275k transistors
Coincidentally, ARM1 and 80386 were both introduced in 1985. I'm a big fan of the ARM1 but I should point out that the 386 is at a different level, designed for multitasking operating systems and including a memory management unit for paging.
> Intel should have bought Acorn, not Olivetti.
Intel had StrongARM though. IIRC they made best ARM cpus in the early 2000s and were designing their own cores. Then Intel decided to get rid of it because obviously they were just wasting money and could design a better x86 mobile chip…
Re:Intel's Humbling
by cherryteastain on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @04:22AM
(#39201733)
N7, TSMC's competitor to Intel 7, does not use EUV either.
Had Intel adopted the molten tin of EUV, the cycle of failure would have been curtailed.
Hats off to SMIC for the DUV 7nm which they produced so quickly. They likely saw quite a bit of failed effort.
And before we discount ARM, we should remember that Acorn produced a 32-bit CPU with a 25k transistor count. The 80386 was years later, with 275k transistors.
Intel should have bought Acorn, not Olivetti.
That's a lot of mistakes, not even counting Itanium.