The Pentium is now 30+ years old

[eXeler0]

It must have been early 1996 at the university, the equipped an entire classroom with PentiumPro computers + 64MB RAM. Top of the line stuff for CAD but we spent the nights there playing DukeNukem LAN. Good times.
(Privately I dint have a PC at home yet..)

[8bitbubsy]

The Pentium... What a beast it was in comparison to a 486.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by 8bitbubsy

The Pentium... What a beast it was in comparison to a 486.

Yeah, at work we had an antivirus which displayed (under DOS) the structure of folders/files is was analysing. So it was very graphical. When we got the first pentium PC it was jaw dropping compared to the 486. I guess the overall architecture of the PC played a role but it was extremely fast.

At home I was happy with the A1200 but the difference was clearly and undeniably here.

[StevenJGore]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

A shame they didn't call it the 586 to keep up the theme, apparently because you can copyright a name but not a number

It was because Intel added 100 to 486 and got 585.9.

(topical joke at the time, anybody remember why?)

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by StevenJGore

It was because Intel added 100 to 486 and got 585.9.

(topical joke at the time, anybody remember why?)

Anybody who doesn't remember did not take the time to read the posts in this thread

[Avanze]

Pentium 90. Loved it!

[wiz12]

Was there any rivalry between the 68060 and Pentium at the time considering both CPUs had similar levels of performance?

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Was there any rivalry between the 68060 and Pentium at the time considering both CPUs had similar levels of performance?

I used to do 3d rendering, so when Pentium came out, I was on a 50 MHz 030/882 so I definitely thought about it and was super early adopter of the 060 to close the gap. But pentiums scaled up the clock speed pretty fast which the 060 didnt. At this point Motorola was already focusing on the Power PC, so I guess Mac people were comparing the Pentium to the PowerPC, only the Amiga hardcore people got the 060 to sort of keep up, but not quite…

[TCD]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Was there any rivalry between the 68060 and Pentium at the time considering both CPUs had similar levels of performance?

You mean like this: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys...rDssEr5A?pli=1 ?

[XPD]

PC wise, I had a 386/SX-40 - thought was some mix up and they meant DX-40... but nope, was an SX-40. Played Doom happily, so was good enough for me

Next PC wasnt until my A500+ died.... PII 266 with 32MB RAM and a 3.2GB HDD.

[Megalomaniac]

As Motorola abandoned further development of the 680x0 series in 1994 (does anyone know if this was before or after Commodore folded?), we'll never know how far the hardware could have gone, whether a 200Mhz variant could have been made like with the original Pentium. As so little Amiga software making use of 060 instructions was made, it's hard to be sure just how close 060 and Pentium were, Mhz for Mhz.

All the same, a theoretical A5000 using a 68060 75Mhz with 32Mb memory (the most it could address fully?) and AAA hardware could have been a competitive machine for 1995 or so. Maybe a budget A1800 version with say 8Mb in 1996 too? All guesswork sadly.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

As Motorola abandoned further development of the 680x0 series in 1994 (does anyone know if this was before or after Commodore folded?)

Commodore: May 6, 1994
68k discontinued: June 1, 1996 (EOL announcement was in late 1994 though)

[Megalomaniac]

Okay, so theoretically much faster 060s, or even an 070 or 080, could have been developed if Commodore still indicated a demand for them (though they may have chosen to go the PowerPC route like Apple, and largely abandon earlier compatibility for a completely clean slate). By the time Escom took over the rights, PowerPC would have been the only practical longterm route - even with more advanced graphics or sound hardware a 75Mhz 060 would have struggled to match a 1996 PC (though using the full available 32Mb smartly may have helped?), let alone anything later.

[TCD]

I'd say that Apple's decision to switch to PPC was more important than Commodore's demise in 1994. Another reason was surely that PCs with the x86 architecture were really taking off around that time and that developing even more powerful 68k processors did not seem viable to Motorola anymore.

[eXeler0]

October 2nd 1991, that day the Apple, IBM, Motorola (aka AIM) alliance was formed with the goal to switch from CISC to RISC so already then, 68k was not the future any more.
A lot of clever(?) people predicted how current CISC architectures (x86 being the obvious one) would soon run into a dead end. (e.g. too few registers.. ) so RISC was the future they agreed….but then every obstacle was succesfully dodged by intel and amd engineers (on the fly register renaming etc)..
and eventually it was the RISC architecture with typically shorter pipelines started lagging behind Intel who decided that MHz was the key selling point ;-) Thst Megaherz-mania fortunately ended with the Pentium 4 design, but interestingly Apple made the switch to X86 about the time when Intel launched its shorter pipeline, lower freqyency ”Core” architecture…
When Apple dropped PPC Motorola pretty much left it to IBM to continue the development…

[coldacid]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Okay, so theoretically much faster 060s, or even an 070 or 080, could have been developed if Commodore still indicated a demand for them (though they may have chosen to go the PowerPC route like Apple, and largely abandon earlier compatibility for a completely clean slate).

If Commodore had survived, they weren't going to go with further Motorola chips anyway. They were already working with Hewlett-Packard on a PA-RISC based architecture when they went under.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

October 2nd 1991, that day the Apple, IBM, Motorola (aka AIM) alliance was formed with the goal to switch from CISC to RISC so already then, 68k was not the future any more.

I guess that Motorola wasn't 100% on board or otherwise there might be no 68060. Did AIM work with ARM or was that a completely seperate development?

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by TCD

I guess that Motorola wasn't 100% on board or otherwise there might be no 68060. Did AIM work with ARM or was that a completely seperate development?

No, AFAIK, ARM were not involved at all. IBM already had RS6000 in 1990. PowerPC is based on that.

Regarding Motorola.. They had quite a few clients in the telecom business that used 68040 and later 060, so killing off 68k made no sense in the short term. But for use in personal computers, that path was no more…

[TCD]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Regarding Motorola.. They had quite a few clients in the telecom business that used 68040 and later 060, so killing off 68k made no sense in the short term. But for use in personal computers, that path was no more…

I didn't know that the 68k was used for their telecom business too. I recently stumbled over Motorola's 1992 business report and was reminded how much they were present in early mobile communication: https://www.motorolasolutions.com/co...ual_Report.pdf

[coldacid]

Northern Telecom had a whole line of office phone equipment that used the '060, as I recall.