Actually, I don't think software compatibility was the issue for IBM; if it was, they would have used one of their own architectures (370, Series 1, etc). I believe their choice was heavily influenced by cost:
The 8088 was housed in a commodity 40-pin DIP and used a single 5V supply. Intel sold it cheaply (as compared to the higher-performance 8086).
The 68000 was packaged in an enormous 64-pin package (I've heard it called "the aircraft carrier") and IIRC it required three voltages.
The 8088 was originally spec'ed to run at 5MHz, but IBM used a commodity 4.77MHz crystal that was common in color TV sets.
Sorry to say, but IBM HW engineers probably not concerned about the elegance of the MPU architecture when they chose the 8088.
From an engineering design point of view, it's possible some of these other architectures are cleaner or easier to design or code to, but from a desktop chip and compiler point of view, x86 is the best. It has the best codegen compilers, despite the fact that it may have taken more effort to get to that state,
I've worked on PPC and x86 code generators for a while, and IMHO x86 is much harder to deal with. x86 chips seem to be faster on integer codes due to superior microarchitectures and caching.
stuart
The principal should "know this kid, and his record," and if the expulsion is justified by that record, I agree. But that's not what the article said; it said the reason for explusion is the blog.
One of my own kids was expelled from elementary school; he was scapegoated for problems caused by others. I didn't fight it because it got him into a much better school nearby.
My child moved from a school with a principal I did not respect, to another school with a wonderful, enlightened principal. In the new school, my kid was treated fairly, and he straightened right out. Today, nobody believes me when I say this child was expelled from elementary school.
IMHO, the principal in this case has overstepped his/her bounds. Unfortunately, s/he won't be corrected unless this gets to court, and it's unlikely the parents have the patience to pursue that.
Slashdot Mirror
The 8088 was housed in a commodity 40-pin DIP and used a single 5V supply. Intel sold it cheaply (as compared to the higher-performance 8086).
The 68000 was packaged in an enormous 64-pin package (I've heard it called "the aircraft carrier") and IIRC it required three voltages.
The 8088 was originally spec'ed to run at 5MHz, but IBM used a commodity 4.77MHz crystal that was common in color TV sets.
Sorry to say, but IBM HW engineers probably not concerned about the elegance of the MPU architecture when they chose the 8088.
stuart
stuart
The principal should "know this kid, and his record," and if the expulsion is justified by that record, I agree. But that's not what the article said; it said the reason for explusion is the blog. One of my own kids was expelled from elementary school; he was scapegoated for problems caused by others. I didn't fight it because it got him into a much better school nearby. My child moved from a school with a principal I did not respect, to another school with a wonderful, enlightened principal. In the new school, my kid was treated fairly, and he straightened right out. Today, nobody believes me when I say this child was expelled from elementary school. IMHO, the principal in this case has overstepped his/her bounds. Unfortunately, s/he won't be corrected unless this gets to court, and it's unlikely the parents have the patience to pursue that.