RIP

“Fortunately, very much by luck, we had hit on a technology that had just the right degree of difficulty for a successful start-up,” Mr. Moore wrote. “This was how Intel began.”

인텔이 없었다면, 컴퓨터 시장은 일본 회사가 장악했을 듯.
현재와 같이 미국이 IT분야 선두주자가 되지 못했을지도.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/technology/gordon-moore-dead.html

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/gordon-moore-obituary.html

말도 안됨. 미국에서 또 다른 사람이 나왔겠지.

>인텔이 없었다면, 컴퓨터 시장은 일본 회사가 장악했을 듯.

그건 아니죠. 일본 개인용 컴퓨터는 전혀 경쟁 상대가 안됐습니다. 일본” 파소콘” 업계는 매우 토착화되어 있었고 세계적으로 팔릴 물건들이 아니었습니다. (마치 요즘 우리나라 소프트웨어/온라인 서비스들과 비슷) PC 붐이 일었을 때도 NEC 정도가 그나마 조금 가능성이 있었을까요. 그래도 미국이나 세계 시장에선 전혀 visibility가 없었죠.

인텔 계열의 개인용 컴퓨터 장악은 IBM의 공로가 더 큽니다. PC가 처음 나왔을 때 회로도와 BIOS 소스 코드를 공개했거든요. IBM 가게에 가면 구입할 수 있었습니다. 당시에 Sunnyvale의 IBM store에 줄을 서서 구입했다고 합니다. 그리고는 아시아(대만, 홍콩, 한국 등)로 보내서 clone 제작.

Mainframe 같은 것도 일본 회사들 중 Fujitsu 정도는 경쟁력이 있는데, 이것도 IBM mainframe의 clone으로 시작했습니다. COBOL 돌리는 Mainframe이 점점 사라져가면서 공룡같던 IBM도 이 분야에서 쇠퇴하고 상대적으로 일본 회사들의 입지가 생기긴 했지만, 어차피 사양사업 분야입니다.

인텔이 없었고 x86가 없었다면 개인용 컴퓨터는 어떻게 됐을까요? Motorola가 그 자리를 차지했을 수도 있죠. 맥에도 사용됐던 MC68xxx 시리즈로. Motorola의 processor 사업은 Freescale로 spinoff됐고, 지금은 NXP에 인수되었습니다. PowerPC도 Motorola와 IBM의 합작이었습니다.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
But who knows?
Did you ever expect Samsung to become one of the biggest electronics manufacturers when GE was the biggest one?

BTW, that sentence is from the New York times. Surely you know better than the NYT reporters.

> Surely you know better than the NYT reporters.

I don’t know the origin or the context of the Japan story in the article, but, yes, it seems I am better informed about the matter than whoever stated that. Maybe someone mentioned it in passing to mean aspiring Asian firms might have filled the gap. Japan was, of course, one of the most prominent electronics power houses at that time, so it could have easily popped up in one’s mind. But the fact is, their computer industry was never poised to take over the world. Their products were highly customized for the domestic market, which created ever increasing gap of compatibility against the rest of the world. In some sense, it is admirable to build such a self-sufficient industry and ecosystem all on their own. I doubt their offerings would have appealed to western consumers in meaningful ways.

It’s not that I have greater insights into these sort of things. I just happen to know a bit about what was going on with Japanese computer industry at that time.

Intel + MS => Open architecture fueled PC adoption

What was so open about whatever Microsoft did? MS has been like the symbol of anti-openness until recently.

As I stated above, IBM sold, not licensed, the complete circuit schematics and the source code of their BIOS to anyone who would walk up to their retail store. Even I got a copy of it in Korea from a bookstore in Chungyechun. In the end, Intel and Microsoft benefited from it, as clones inundated the market all over the world. IBM was a sore loser. Their PS/2 effort didn’t pan out. I enjoyed using a PS/2 with its 8514 display (1024×768 resolution, baby!), but the price was too high for me to buy one personally.