Sinofsky on Apple's Processor History(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Sinofsky on Apple's Processor History
https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1450255227945242628
2 comments
Definitely ignore me :-)
While I get what you're saying, the timing isn't quite like that. Two things: 1. The 68030 ran Apple System 6 and as a result Macs were slow and not "modern". 2. The Mac IIx came out at the end of 1988, which was the tail end of the 386 line. The 486 PCs arrived in mid 1989 in volume (so months later). The 486 quickly following with Windows 3, were significantly faster than Mac for all the things that were measured like Word, Excel, compiling, etc.
The 68030 was an elegant chip, but the OS for it did not arrive until 1991.
The spirit of the post is about integrated hardware and software. Sorry if I was not perfectly clear in this line. But by all means do not take anything I said seriously :-)
reply
The 68030 was an elegant chip, but the OS for it did not arrive until 1991.
The spirit of the post is about integrated hardware and software. Sorry if I was not perfectly clear in this line. But by all means do not take anything I said seriously :-)
reply
[deleted]
"But even in the latest 680030 was woefully far behind Intel"
I think he means that the Motorola 68030 was behind Intel's competing CPU. According to Wikipedia, the 68030 was released in 1987. The 80386DX is the Intel competitor, albeit it was released a couple of years earlier.
68030 offered 18 MIPS at 50 MHz.
80386DX offered 6-7 MIPS at 20 MHz in 1987.
The 386 had all the weird "real mode" and segmented architecture baggage. The 68030 had 32-bit registers and 32-bit data path.
Not sure we can take this thread seriously.