jac@paul.rutgers.edu (J. A. Chandross) (04/02/89)
All the discussions so far seem to be based on availability, performance, and cost. Unfortunately, there is another issue which determines whether a processor flies or not: software. The Intel engineers made the 8088 assembly level compatible with the 8080. That is, you couldn't run 8080 binaries, but you could re-assemble them using the 8088 assembler. This meant that overnight there would be hundreds of application programs available from CP/M that required very little work to port to MS-DOS. There would also be a large number of programmers familiar with the instruction set for the 8088. The 6809, to contrast, didn't have any compilers, spreadsheets, word processors, etc. IBM didn't buy Intel stock until *after* they had chosen the 8088. At the time Intel was in bad shape financially (mostly due to the Bubble and DRAM operations). IBM doesn't like to buy anything from the outside that isn't second sourced because they can't be sure that the company will be in business tomorrow. So they bought a 25% stake (which they sold once Intel was back on its feet) and the rights to make their own 8088's should Intel go into Chapter 11. Jonathan A. Chandross Internet: jac@paul.rutgers.edu UUCP: rutgers!paul.rutgers.edu!jac