X86 chips are all Alpha processors now

WE SEE TO our delight that august publications are trotting out the usual line that a CPU is the brain of a computer.

So if Intel manages to produce 80 brains on a sliver of silicon that must be good, right?

Wrong.

While computers, like the best of carbon-based accountants operate on pluses and minuses, the sad truth for Intel and AMD is that everything depends on software and marketing, both of which depend on often erratic carbon-based programmers, marketeers and spin doctors.

We fondly remember Intel telling us in 1990 in Augsberg that by the end of the decade everything would be integrated into the CPU. As usual, Chipzilla pulled out Moore's First Law of Conveniently Warping the Facts to Suit the Spin'o'the'Day.

It was just one year later that we were with Intel at an embedded conference in Dullsville where we were totalled by the fantastic Real TOSes it was demonstrating.

From that day to now we've never continued to lose our astonishment at just to what extent Intel and AMD's collude with Microsoft to pull the wool over peoples' eyes just for the sake of selling more chips.

And in that process, ensuring they stitched up the entire market.

Terry Shannon will be turning in his grave. All X86 processors are really Alpha chips now. Pity it took AMD and Intel 10 years to catch up. And it seems DEC was quite right when it introduced the Alpha processor and said it would be good until the year 2025.

The real pity is that Intel and AMD are squabbling over micro-marchitecture rather than inventing anything new, like a proper operating system that can take advantage of one brain, never mind 80. More is not necessarily better. µ