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A diverse CPU collection. For a while we had some good alternatives to Intel x86. Alpha, Sparc, Motorola 68k, PowerPC, MIPS. Now we just have 32 and 64 varian

A diverse CPU collection. For a while we had some good alternatives to Intel x86. Alpha, Sparc, Motorola 68k, PowerPC, MIPS. Now we just have 32 and 64 variants of x86 and ARM. I guess powerpc is technically not dead yet (which is good!) although the new 64 bit powerpc is little endian I think... As for companies, Sun Microsystems. I'd like to think that Sun, if they were still around, would be handling Java better than Oracle is today. I'd like to believe that they'd operate similar to Microsoft on the open source front.

jplayer01 8y ago
It's a real shame we lost Sun. It was such an innovative company when it came to technology - one of the few examples of really engineering led software teams where management had no say in technical decisions. Unfortunately, the market doesn't really reward world class technical solutions/expertise. I'm still not sure what it rewards. Predatory business practices a la Oracle?
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  I'm not sure if "rewards" is the correct verb for what is going on. Rather, I would say that the market "is succeptible to near-permanent exploitation by businesses like Oracle whose services cost way more than the value they deliver"
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    You put it better than I ever could, thanks.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      No worries!! I worked at Sun/StorageTek as it was being folded into Oracle. It was a hideous, disgusting process that saw more politics and internal lies than I ever thought possible. Google and Salesforce got burned pretty hard by Oracle canceling new tape development and manufacturing :(
Kliment 8y ago
MIPS is alive and well - almost all consumer routers run it.
- wtallis 8y ago
  ARM has been picking up significant market share in routers. Most high-end 802.11ac routers are now using ARM-based SoCs, and nobody is adopting high-performance MIPS cores to compete against the Cortex-A series cores. MIPS-based routers will still be around for years, but it looks like they're begun a long decline that will probably not be reversed.
John_KZ 8y ago
I'd argue that today we have an even larger variety in CPUs. They're all ARM, but they exist and almost anything can be made to run on them. Well, not trivially, but it can be done. ARM is also supported by Ubuntu, Arch, Debian etc. The only problem is that most of ARM hardware is made just for phones etc, where *nix doesn't work great because of manufacturers and their closed-source firmware.
client4 8y ago
I'd check out RISK-V, I think it will be a bigger player in the coming years https://riscv.org/ https://riscv.org/

jplayer01 8y ago

It's a real shame we lost Sun. It was such an innovative company when it came to technology - one of the few examples of really engineering led software teams where management had no say in technical decisions. Unfortunately, the market doesn't really reward world class technical solutions/expertise. I'm still not sure what it rewards. Predatory business practices a la Oracle?

anoncoward111 8y ago
I'm not sure if "rewards" is the correct verb for what is going on. Rather, I would say that the market "is succeptible to near-permanent exploitation by businesses like Oracle whose services cost way more than the value they deliver"
- jplayer01 8y ago
  You put it better than I ever could, thanks.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    No worries!! I worked at Sun/StorageTek as it was being folded into Oracle. It was a hideous, disgusting process that saw more politics and internal lies than I ever thought possible. Google and Salesforce got burned pretty hard by Oracle canceling new tape development and manufacturing :(

Kliment 8y ago

MIPS is alive and well - almost all consumer routers run it.

wtallis 8y ago
ARM has been picking up significant market share in routers. Most high-end 802.11ac routers are now using ARM-based SoCs, and nobody is adopting high-performance MIPS cores to compete against the Cortex-A series cores. MIPS-based routers will still be around for years, but it looks like they're begun a long decline that will probably not be reversed.

John_KZ 8y ago

I'd argue that today we have an even larger variety in CPUs. They're all ARM, but they exist and almost anything can be made to run on them. Well, not trivially, but it can be done. ARM is also supported by Ubuntu, Arch, Debian etc. The only problem is that most of ARM hardware is made just for phones etc, where *nix doesn't work great because of manufacturers and their closed-source firmware.

client4 8y ago

I'd check out RISK-V, I think it will be a bigger player in the coming years https://riscv.org/ https://riscv.org/