Re: [ee_shoppahs] X86 clones
- From: John Laverdier <john.laverdier@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: ee_shoppahs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 09:43:49 -0700 (PDT)
Julian,
Interesting subject, here's what I know of Cyrix.
I worked for Cyrix - did the floating point unit in their
686 generation. That was a really smart bunch of engineers.
They competed head to head with Intel for over 10 years, and
survived by targeting the low end of the price curve. In other
words, 70% to 80% of the performance for 40% to 50% of the cost,
and their chips included graphics engines, and ALL of the peripherals
built in (ports, keyboard ctlr , disk ctlr, memory ctlr etc).
They accepted a takeover bid offer from National Semi, because they
were having issues with the IBM fabs. National drove them into
the ground in less than 2 years. Fab problems even worse - Sad story.
L8R
PS. Ran the sales tax concept past a conservative buddy here at
Raytheon this morning - he liked it, said it was similar to the
Value Added Tax (VAT) thing that has been making the rounds, but
he lost me on some of the details.
--- On Tue, 7/6/10, J Fields <j.email.fields@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: J Fields <j.email.fields@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [ee_shoppahs] X86 clones
> To: ee_shoppahs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Tuesday, July 6, 2010, 4:19 PM
> http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semiconductor-blog/2010/07/suns-x86-clone.html
>
> "Cyrix, Rise Technology, Transmeta, IDT's WinChip,
> Meridian, Metaflow,
> MemoryLogix, Montalvo -
> all of these were failed x86 clone attempts - and,
> according to the
> New York Times, there was nearly another x86 clone from
> Sun."
>
> I don't know about "failed" since Cyrix sold millions of
> their chip.
>
> Wonder what you guys think of the clone market?
>
>
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