Alpha CPUs, was Re: [rescue] i860 Success

[Lionel Peterson]

> From: Andrew Weiss <ajwdsp at cloud9.net>
> Date: 2004/05/03 Mon PM 11:13:48 GMT
> To: gsm at mendelson.com,  The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
> Subject: Re: Alpha CPUs, was Re: [rescue] i860 Success
> 
> On May 3, 2004, at 4:34 PM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> 
> > :-)
> >
> > BTW, IMHO the most important microprocessor chip was the 80386. It's
> > combination of support for virtual memory and a flat address space
> > made affordable UNIX, and it's children e.g. the 386 BSDs, Linux, etc
> > a reality.

> IMHO the 68K would have done the same thing had the 386 not been around.

I think the 680x0 chips *did* make affordable Unix possible - due to it's 
PDP-11 like architecture (as I understand it, I do not claim to know), 
coupled with low cost created a lot of "low-end" Unix servers...

IIRC, the ports were pretty trivial (for those that could do them, not me ;
^)...