On January 17, 2006 11:32 am, William Couture wrote: > On 1/17/06, Jose Da Silva wrote: > > On January 17, 2006 10:53 am, Peter wrote: > > > On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, William Chops Westfield wrote: > > > > On Jan 16, 2006, at 2:13 PM, Peter wrote: > > > >> I am not an analyst but my opinion is that anything that does > > > >> not scale easily to 16-32x its current size, is not second > > > >> courced and widely available, will be a niche within a year or > > > >> a few. > > > > > > > > I've heard that the initial x86 patents are quite close to > > > > expiration, and that as a result we might expect to see large > > > > numbers of x86 clones from all over appear at about that time. > > > > That could be... interesting :-) > > > > > > Uuuugggghh nooo (Peter grabs barf bag and runs) > > > > Barf bag or not, I think that is right too. > > There is a huge amount of existing data and compilers available for > > the old 8088 and 8086. We are probably going to see a lot of x86 > > experts, so-called-experts, their dogs, and cats designing 8088 > > software because it's very closs to the x86 and can be tested on > > x86 hardware. So expect to see excellent, average, and junk > > software to come out. > > I'm actually one of those x86 experts. I think I'd enjoy breaking > out the old stuff again... I recall making small things like phoname.zip or datapipe.zip, but nothing compared to the compression contests which you might see in 808x assembler archives, like "giant" which was a monster of a program fitting within only 4k of code, that's where you see the specialists come out and show how it's really done, making your own work pale in comparison. ;-) One observance a coworker friend of mine said (having lived in HongKong, China & Japan), was that it would be better to make a certain product we used to build (at a place I worked at previously), as an adapter module, versus doing the entire thing self-contained with it's own processor. The adapter has the advantage that these x86 creators could adapt it to their own product, while the self-contained product, was just that, self contained, and couldn't produce any other spin-off products that our company couldn't even have imagined of at the time. You just have to look at USB, and see all the adapter modules which plug into a USB port to see what I mean. So, in summary, if you are an expert, then continue designing, but if not, then maybe the road ahead is designing adapters for a lot of 808x designers we will be seeing in future. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist