On Mar 4, 2009, at 9:51 PM, Neil Cherry wrote:

> ANyway, I've got to ask, IOS & Microsoft? I've been playing with
> IOS since 7.0. I don't remember an x86 box, can you share?

My initial job at cisco involved porting IOS (then version 4.x, I  
think) to an 80186 based 8-port terminal server box manufactured by a  
potential partner.  While the partnership and the product fell  
through, the code was running on both the raw hardware AND on a 286  
based PC (using DOS as a sort of program loader, and not with a live  
network.)

Cisco went on to port IOS to x86 architectures three additional  
times.  Each was successful, but ended up further behind than it  
started.  I've created a maxim: "no finite sized engineering team can  
fix a problem that a larger and growing engineering team is still  
creating."

The most recent effort, with which I was also involved (full circle -  
must be time to retire?) "cheats" by having the compiler do most of  
the work.  It looks like this will be considerably more successful.   
While it looks like we've long since stopped touting particular CPUs  
in our products, the announced ASR-1000 "Route Processor 2" uses an  
Intel CPU:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps9343/data_sheet_c78-441072.html

BillW

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