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Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

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Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#81

Post by rob74 »

flashback2199 wrote: post #47
johnklos wrote: post #44

I think the 80386's final design benefitted tremendously from the Motorola 68000, then the m68020. Had Motorola not released a proper 32 bit CPU without compromises, it could be argued that Intel would've had yet another stop-gap after the 80286, which itself wasn't intended to be a proper successor to the 8086/8088. As it is, the 80386 came with a number of compromises. For instance, there was no cache at all beyond…

It was a 386 that Linus Torvalds wrote the first Linux kernel on, and support for the new features of the 386 from the start was one of the reasons Linux took off instantly.

Yeah, a free (as in freedom, but also as in beer) OS running on hardware that was, by then, commoditized, what's there not to like? No wonder Google and others jumped on it...

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#82

Post by steve1977 »

TristanBall wrote: post #48
blakespot wrote: post #41

Interestingly, I've never owned a 386. I was not much of a DOS/Win PC person until 1994, when I got a 486 to run NEXTSTEP. I've had an i8088, NEC V20, i80286, i80486, AMD 5x86, P4, and then on with the Mac starting in 2006 with (well, just before) Intel Core microarch. In those early days I was more Amiga, ST, etc. ( https://bytecellar.com/the-list/ ) I felt more spiritually connected to the MC68K line back when, for…

While I got the 80386 programmers manual as one of my teen birthday presents.. I only ever actually did a little ASM programming but I loved that book anyway and read it a lot. Really annoyed at myself that I got rid of in some fit of "well, I'll never use that again" cleaning some time.. especially given somehow still have "Sendmail, edition 2". I might read the 386 book for nostalgia.. the Sendmail one..well, PTSD…

I’ll dream in M4 tonight, thank you…

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#83

Post by xxs »

WalterBright wrote: post #64
nxobject wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm – the smallest, most highly-integrated PDP-11 (-compatible) package ever made was the QFP 1806VM2, with around ~135k transistors; it integrated MMU, UART, parallel interface, keyboard controller, etc, but did floating-point instructions in interpretive microcode. I think that same transistor count was reached by Motorola on the 68020, which would've been around 1984, but would have needed the peripheral controlle…

The FPU for the 8086 was a separate chip, and the IBM PC still required a board full of chips to make a working computer. (If I recall correctly, it wasn't until the 486 that the FPU was incorporated.)

>it wasn't until the 486 that the FPU was incorporated

Indeed and 486SX had the FPU disabled. I think that was the 1st time the binning/SKUs became a marketing strategy.

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#84

Post by xxs »

WalterBright wrote: post #54
Aloha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an interesting alternative history thought experiment. I wonder how early one could capture the complexity of the full PDP-11 microarchitecture on a single chip? Would it have been affordable? What about the support hardware?

If Intel could do it, DEC could do it.

DEC Alpha had the weakest memory model, which while cool to write for with its all memory barriers/concurrency - it's quite annoying in the real world, a major reason while DEC failed.

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#85

Post by xxs »

WalterBright wrote: post #54
Aloha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an interesting alternative history thought experiment. I wonder how early one could capture the complexity of the full PDP-11 microarchitecture on a single chip? Would it have been affordable? What about the support hardware?

If Intel could do it, DEC could do it.

DEC Alpha had the weakest memory model, which while cool to write for with its all memory barriers/concurrency - it's quite annoying to work with in the real world, a major reason while DEC failed.

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#86

Post by baq »

scrlk wrote: post #13
xattt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s their hope right now? Some sort of Quark-derived desktop CPU à la Dothan?

Doubling down on becoming a competitive foundry and becoming the western equivalent to TSMC. If their 18A process ships on time (2025), there's a chance that they could regain process leadership.

Fingers crossed but they don’t have a good track record in the last 10 years. The world needs at least two good processes.

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#87

Post by xxs »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #58
hakfoo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't even building NT for ARM/RISC-V/SH-4 or whatever, it's being able to reproduce enough of the surrounding universe that Windows on x86-64 has. Apple has more leverage over devs; they can say "No more x86-64 in N years" and the developers basically have to move to ARM or abandon MacOS. This bootstraps the market; people who want MacOS have to suck it in and buy ARM because it's the only new hardware w…

> Apple has more leverage over devs; they can say "No more x86-64 in N years" and the developers basically have to move to ARM or abandon MacOS. I think Microsoft could do the same thing as far as devs go. If Apple can exert that influence over devs with their extreme minority market share, I think MS could too. The problem for MS is their customers. Apple customers will buy whatever Apple puts out, because they're e…

>I think Microsoft could do the same thing as far as devs go

That's absolutely unrealistic. The main Windows part is the backward compatibility + the corporates. Nowadays Microsoft develops stuff written in Javascript, not their own frameworks, even.

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#88

Post by steve1977 »

flashback2199 wrote: post #47
johnklos wrote: post #44

I think the 80386's final design benefitted tremendously from the Motorola 68000, then the m68020. Had Motorola not released a proper 32 bit CPU without compromises, it could be argued that Intel would've had yet another stop-gap after the 80286, which itself wasn't intended to be a proper successor to the 8086/8088. As it is, the 80386 came with a number of compromises. For instance, there was no cache at all beyond…

It was a 386 that Linus Torvalds wrote the first Linux kernel on, and support for the new features of the 386 from the start was one of the reasons Linux took off instantly.

Not only Linux, all the current BSDs share a lot of “DNA” with 386BSD.

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#89

Post by ianmcgowan »

icedchai wrote: post #56
weinzierl wrote: post #28

The 80386 DX was a revolutionary CPU. It certainly foreshadowed the 486 and ultimately the Pentium. Most people I know only had a 80386 SX which was still revolutionary but it hid it well by being essentially a glorified (but slower) 80286 on the outside.

The 386SX could do everything the 386DX did, just slower. My first Linux box was a 386SX machine. Before Linux, I ran Coherent on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_(operating_system)

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

I paid $99 for Coherent because Linux didn't support the fancy RLL hard drive in my work computer. Eventually Linux caught up (or I got a new computer) and Slackware replaced Coherent (for little things like X11, better networking etc.). Those were the days :)

Re: Intel 80386, a Revolutionary CPU

#90

Post by pjmlp »

mschuster91 wrote: post #27
kristopolous wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arm snatched Intel's hold on the Apple market and we can invoke any Clayton Christensen book on the Raspberry PI series. Maybe not the Raspberry PI 5, but what about say, the imaginary 8 or the 9 a few years hence? The Pi 400 isn't their final attempt into the PC market, only their first. Surely a slew of decent ARM based laptops from one of these SBC manufacturers is coming along eventually - and I don't mean chrome…

Yeah but that was only made possible by Apple's unique circumstances: their close control over the entire tech stack, their experience with architecture transitions (PPC->x86-32->x86-64->ARM) and the required tooling (Rosetta, fat binaries, compilers), their relatively small market size, their expertise in developing with/for ARM from iOS, and enough cash in hand to buy out the entire fab capacity of TSMC. In the Win…

Microsoft has a now an hybrid format for ARM/x64, Arm64EC.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/arm64ec

Besides Windows NT has been designed and used for multiple architectures for years, Windows CE and Pocket PC were not the only ones with ARM support, Windows IoT and the original Windows 8 WinRT tablets did as well.

The biggest issue is lack of incentives, for most business there is no ROI to install ARM compilers alongside x64 for .NET and C++ toolchains, and yet another set of architectures to debug on, and take into consideration.

It is as you say, unless they behave like Apple or Google, imposing a transition, most of those companies won't care.

They have recently putted out a kind of ARM porting help center, but I doubt it will make any impact.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2023/10/16/window...

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