[SoSoRoCoCo]

This question has raged since the 90's. I worked on the Itanium (Madison and McKinley), and the VLIW architecture was brilliant. This was during the time of the Power4 and the DEC ALPHA, two non-x86 competing architectures that were dominating the "Workstation" market (remember that term?). It looked like the server world was going to have three architectural options (Sun was dying, and Motorola's 68000 line wasn't up to the task.)

Microsoft even had a version of NT3.5 for The Itanic. It seemed we were just about to achieve critical mass in the server world to switch to a new architecture with huge address space, ECC up the wazoo and massive integer performance.

Then the PC revolution took off with Win95, and the second war with AMD happened (and NexGen sorta). This couldn't be solved with legal battles. This put all hands on deck because there was SO much money to be made with x86 compatibility. The presence of x86 "up and down" AMD & Intel's roadmap took over the server market as well: it was x86 all over the place.

And that, chil'ren, is why x86 was reborn in the 90's just as it was close to being wiped out.

Now Apple has proven you can you seamless sneak in a brand-new architecture, get hyooj gainz, and we are none the wiser. This is fantastic news. I think we are truly on the cusp of x86 losing its dominance in the consumer space after almost 35 years of dominance.

[gautamcgoel]

> The Itanic

Lmao, never heard that one before

[fvv]

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