News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Burroughs B5000 - 20 Years Later and Still Ahead of the Times?. Parent comment

Re:The Burroughs B5000 - 20 Years Later and Still Ahead of t... by 6ren on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @09:17PM (#4010978)
Re ARM: they grew up in a market Intel etc didn't want: embedded devices. It's only a "hole" to squeak through when viewed from the laptop/desktop market. From ARM's point of view, it was a legitimate market. This "different market" is part of the technical definition of disruption, and is arguably very common, even inevitable.

But note that they haven't disrupted {lap,/desk}tops yet, despite having comparable power. The barrier isn't manufacturing scale but compatibility with x86's massive install-base of software. One way around this is an entirely new ecosystem, such as phones/tablets.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Burroughs B5000 - 20 Years Later and Still Ahead of t... by astrodust on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @10:05PM (#4011136)
The embedded market has always been "bigger" than the PC market for processors, but Motorola was the gorilla until they fragmented into a bunch of companies. ARM has been mostly irrelevant until they got a foot-hold in the mobile phone market.

It'll be interesting to see if ARM can parlay their near stranglehold on the market now into further dominance into previously desktop-only domains, and possibly even servers.

[ Parent | on HN ]