Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 16:13:05 -0600 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Jay West <jlwest@tseinc.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Intel Merced FreeBSD??? Intel? - NOT Message-ID: <37C70D71.73B0A52F@softweyr.com> References: <000e01bef08b$3d606340$d402a8c0@ws2.tse.com>
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Jay West wrote:
>
> Keep in mind that the merced chip was not really designed or created by
> Intel at all.
No, you're confusing terms here. Merced is a particular chip, like
Tillamook is a specific Pentium. HP designed the 64-bit architecture
in the Merced, what will become the "IA64", but Intel designed the
Merced chip.
> It was created almost completely by HP (by the same group responsible for
> PA-RISC), with Intel as merely the production facilities. For obvious
> marketing, competitive, and resource reasons both HP and Intel share the
> rights to merced.
>
> As a matter of fact, the standard version of merced includes the PA-RISC
> engine along with an x86 instruction decoder.
It is, in fact, the x86 compatibility mode that has delayed Merced for SO
many years. HP actually had the 64-bit sort-of-long-instruction word
architecture working when Intel joined in. To say they're bitter about
the decision now is to understate the case considerably; Merced will ship
with approximately the same performance HP predicted for the original
chip in 95 or 96.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://softweyr.com/ wes@softweyr.com
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