The CPUs You've NEVER Heard Of 

With all the patent trolling and anti competitive behavior of the current landscape it near impossible for us to see innovation emerge out of the blue like before. AMD has done a good job but all these cpus and technology just feel the same.

@@durdy911 That's partly because while they'll improve in high demand tasks, the only way people see an improvement on casual tasks is when a company releases a new, even less impressive, OS that drains more resources for little to no discernible benefit to the user

It's crazy how fast 3dfx rise and fell. For a few years it was dominating, and then died immediately

Hold onto your hats, ARM and RISC-V are coming.

@@InfernosReaper I think you are talking about Windows 7 vs 11. I do agree with you since Windows 11 sucks ass in terms of resource management but his comment makes sense. Capitalism failed when innovation was strictly bound to 3 companies in the PC space- AMD, Intel and Nvidia. Capitalism is supposed to be a system to coax companies out of their comfort zone and put innovation at the forefront for competition and market share, but instead, these companies have become complacent and incompetent. It's kind of ridiculous if you think about it. The only reason Intel's recent CPUs even managed to get some performance boost between generations 11 and 12 was because of Apple's M1 series chips which were much more powerful than the 11th gen Intel laptop chips. Till that time, for whatever reason, Intel had the majority market share for laptop chips, and AMD too wasn't too better off. It would have been amazing to see maybe 5-10 companies designing hardware instead of the normal 3, maybe 4. In the mobile Android market we see, or at least used to see a lot of companies creating their own chips for their own phones. A lot easier to do since the company can dictate everything from the motherboard to the SoC to the camera hardware, but still, this could have been done with the correct legislation on the PC side, but hasn't been done yet. With RISC-V and ARM on Windows (which still sucks ass app compatibility wise), there is some potential for other companies to start creating chips for PCs, although those will be limited to laptops mostly. But that also applies to the PC OS market. I would have liked to run Ubuntu or some version of Linux as my main OS but the driver and app support simply does not exist. In the current landscape it simply is pick your poison and deal with it.

That would've been amazing.

I remember the 486 days ;)

YEAH!, In a "Intel Motherboard" you could put a AMD-K and a Cirix...

When?

​@@the_kombinator DX66 :)

give me your kindey

most people just bought a ps2. not having dvd also killed dreamcast.

@@nyr4942 kindey

​@Dee plays Gaming I don't think that in of itself would've saved the DC.

​@Dee plays Gaming yup rather than buy a did player we bought a ps2 used it to watch movies more than game lol

Don't forget the VIA C3 and C7.

@RogerWilco99 I read the magazines, but don't forget about the dialup Bulletin Boards.

@@pabblo1 Those were some seriously slow processors

I played Half life (Quake engine) on Cyrix M II just fine back then. Well tbh I also play (NOW!) Quake quite fine on a 486 (@160MHz) with a Riva TNT :)

Cyrix M1 ... AKA Cyrix 6x86 or IBM 6x86 or ST 6x86 - this CPU had weak FPU - lack of MMX - lack of some Pentium 586 instructions (hence some SW incompatibility and patches needed) Cyrix M2 .... IBM 6x86MX - improved FPU (as fast as AMD K6, still slower than Pentium) - added MMX For that reason the game play on M1 vs. M2 was huge difference in Quake. People tend to mix all Cyrix CPU into same bag. # There was also simplified M1 into 486 socket: Cyrix 5x86. M1 was the world's 1st CPU with Out Of Order speculative execution (few months before P6 Intel Pentium Pro arrived, predecessor of PII and PIII which were also P6 family). Cyrix 5x86 was basically Pentium Pro/ Pentium II into 486 socket (while Intel Pentium Overdrive into 486 was just old In-Order P5 CPU architecture). # There was also AMD K5, 1st AMD's developed CPU (all previous from Am8088, 386, 486 and 586 were cloned Intel). K5 was RISC Am29000 with x86 decoder glued on - probably 1st x86 CPU ever (since then every x86 CPU is internally RISC based). # There were also NexGen CPUs into Socket 7 .... later bought by AMD and so K6 was born. AMD bought Cyrix Media GX which was first x86 System on Chip (named AMD Geode). # There were also Rise MP6 .... very advanced uarchitecture (OoO), similar to Cyrix. It had in INT exe the highest IPC from Socket 7 CPUs. However it came too late in 1998 when Intel had Pentium II and AMD was introducing Slot A and iconic Athlon K7 in 1999. # I must not forget the cheapest Socket 7 CPU which was the IDT Winchip - simple In-Order CPU with high clocks but low/tragic performance. An incompetence was that later VIA bought IDT and Cyrix, and management decided to focus on IDT outdated dead-end in-order architecture instead modern Cyrix's OoO. This decided their future and they burried also S3 GPUs and huge motherboard chipset business (VIA had majority in chipsets for both Intel and AMD). That management was really something. Anyway, it's fascinating that in 90's anybody could get x86 license and develop it's own CPU into one universal and common Socket Super 7. I hope somebody will bring open source socket and ISA to do it again in the future.

Don't Forget Itanium or the Pentium Pro!

Via, texas instruments, ibm, rise, , nexgen, chips and technologie also made cpu’s for the x86 architecture.

​@@theseob Cyrix

@@theseob I don't remember a TI x86. IBM basically cross-licensed Cyrix's part and made it in their fabs. Nexgen... I don't remember whether they shipped a product before being acquired by AMD (and turned into the basis for the pretty K6 if I remember). Chips and Technologies... erm... Well, you got me there, I have a vague recollection. Via is actually sort of still out there if you google them. IDT, which was acquired by VIA eventually. Man, time passes.

Yep a FPGA wasn't it? he also forgot the PowerPC, and eh well most of apples custom jobs (get it? jobs bwahahahahah I slay me!) anyway, from what I recall apple was using semi-customised CPUs built on the RISC architecture. Which, on paper at atleast, would spank intel stuff for anything that mattered. But history happened.

Motorola 680x0 was the architecture of choice for Unix workstations, until RISC came along and completely blew it away. The Zilog Z8000 also had some presence in this market, pre-RISC. Anybody else remember the NatSemi NS32000 series? And there were the WDC 65816/65832 chips, which aimed to be like the 6502, only better.

Commodore Amiga Master Race.

The Motorola 6800 was quite the chip when it came out but was absolutely trounced in cost by the MOS 6502. It's really pretty crazy chips originating in the 70s still have a role today in embedded systems, with the WDC 65C02 being a CMOS improvement of the 6502 and the Zilog eZ80 still being binary compatible with the Z80.

@@edstar83 so many arcade machines were also based on 68k cpus with zilog z80 for handling sound. Kind of cool that many arcade games were multicore back in the 80ies :D Just a game like Segas OutRun had 2 68000 cpus and one Z80 cpu running at the same time, so basicly a 3 core setup :O

@@EkiToji lol yes! this this this this this this!

Old man

@@joey.99 thank you..th

I use DOS almost every day for gaming :D

@@the_kombinator gaming was crazy, I used to car race, it was fast, with keyboard controls🤣😂😅

@@savagepro9060 based old man. I've got a lot of respect for those who ventured into the PC world back in the the old days. Those were some hardcore times. Screwing with jumpers alone was a major pain, let alone trying to make sure your parts are compatible as they did not have any kind of compatibility checkers back then. AND THE SOFTWARE ISSUES (which could be caused by hardware issues, or both at the same time. fun!). If you built a PC pre internet, you couldn't just download a patch to fix a malfunctioning piece of software, and you definitely couldn't be sure you were getting the latest version. you would have to wait till they could mail you a floppy or memory card with the patch/latest build and that could take months, if they even bothered to at all! I've gotta say we have it waayy easier nowadays with PCs. Though they still come with their frustrations as it seems like there's always something screwed up on your computer that you have to fix and troubleshoot. such is the life of owning a PC in any era.

You mean leaders at the high end, there's plenty of competition at the mid and lower end parts of the spectrum. Including Arm which now powers Apple and Windows PC's, and Risc-V which looks to have it's first devices arriving soon too.

@Float Samples Bharath " Coz they are the only companies who produces CPU for desktops and laptops meanwhile others companies might produce for consoles or something" AMD pretty much dominate the Console market in terms of hardware, they have their hardware in the latests consoles PS4-PS5 Xbox One-Xbox series S/X, Steam deck The only exception is the Nintendo switch with their ARM Nvidia Chip The only reason they are the ones producing CPU for Desktops and Laptop is because of the patents on X86/X64 architecture, Intel hold the patent but was forced to share it by IBM (In the times where IBM computers dominated the market) so the only surviving company that still as the patent share is AMD, the other ones have all been buyed or gone bankrupt, or both. "Why don't people use other architecture?" The thing is that X86 was here for so long that it's gonna take a lot of time for people to transition for something like ARM and it's gonna cost a lot of money, so why bother when X86 processor are still pretty good?

@Float Samples Bharath AMD is the last competitor standing that has the permission to design and produce x86 CPUs. Intel gave these out to a number of comapnies, but they all went out of business.

Hopefully x86 will die sooner or later.

@@jayhill2193 AMD and Intel have had a cross licsencing agreement forever it seems. Since Intel created x86 and AMD created x86-64 they basically need each other.

The simps have risen again

he's my favorite

@@Freestyle80 You contribute nothing to the world and never will

Not better than Linus

His voice is just clear and crisps. Audiobook standards

Also left out PPC in general, while not exactly obscure, anyone who came onto the scene after a certain point didn't even know about it outside of Apple products

@@InfernosReaper I had a Phase 5 Blizzard PPC card on my Amiga 1200, it had a 68060 @ 50 Mhz and PPC 603e @ 240 Mhz. Damn I miss my Amigas.

@@nemesis2264 Those Amigas were ahead of their time. With some better management in the company, they would have changed the PC world

Linus Torvalds worked for Transmeta for a time. Unfortunately, their products never quite fulfilled the promise.

Also, another interesting company was VIA Technologies, which made many x86-compatible budget CPUs.

The high end of Cyrix went to VIA while the low end went to National who then resold it to AMD. The most famous used of the AMD Geode (from Cyrix) was the first "One Laptop Per Child" machine.

The VIA C3 and C7 were NOT based on Cyrix's designs. VIA bought another small company named Centaur Technology, which was responsible for the IDT Winchip line. The C3 and C7 are based on Centaur technology, nothing of Cyrix was used besides the moniker. By the time VIA got to Cyrix, it was a hollowed out shell of a company, being mismanaged to oblivion by NSC before it. It wasn't quite the death of Cyrix's technology though. During the liquidation of NSC, AMD ended up with the IP for the Cyrix MediaGX, which was a Cyrix 586 system on a chip. AMD renamed it to the Geode GX and did some minor development with the architecture into the late 2000s and early 2010s. The final culmination would be the Geode LX, which AMD sold into the late 2010s before discontinuing. The subsequent Geode NX is based on the old Athlon XP-M architecture and isn't related. I have a Geode GX in one of AMD's failed "50x15 initiative" PCs, it's quite dreadful. While AMD did increase the clock speed, they didn't do anything else to improve the efficiency of the architecture, or do anything to bring it into modern times with newer instruction sets. It's basically a really fast 586, still stuck in limbo architecturally between a 486 and Pentium. The FPU sucks and it barely runs Windows XP. The 50x15 PC originally came with a locked BIOS and locked down Windows CE, but there's a payload you can run to unlock Windows CE and reflash the unlocked BIOS to run other operating systems. Centaur Technology on the other hand still lives on today. It made its way into Chinese x86 CPUs "Zhaoxin" and was recently bought up by Intel, though that will probably the end of them.

Back when the competition was stronger.

Fairchild ?

RISC

and the NEC, MOS and Motorolas for even older times

And I don't mean RISC-V which is the newer version

My first PC that I built myself when I was a young lad had a VIA too! It was awful 🤣

@@kingjmac80 VIA chipsets were pretty bad too.

C3 has an FPU it's just dog slow. C3 also has some of the first incarnations of power and turbo clock states, as well as a dedicated AES and RNG cryptography chip.

Yes! Lets hear about Extended and Expanded RAM and how they interacted with the first1MB of RAM (minus the ROM holes). And how the 8086, 80286 and 80386 had different memory access capabilities and hence different memory capacities and access methods. HIMEM.SYS anyone?

Remember the LH (load high) command for drivers? I actually worked on one machine that was running Windows 1.0. I say machine, because it was not a PC, but rather a machine at a water yard, and this was around the time that Windows 95 was out.

Good old Evergreen Technologies, with jumpers on the actual processors to set speeds lol.

@@D3M3NT3Dstrang3r setting jumpers was an art form.... Especially for the displayed CPU speed on the front of the case!

@@Henchman1977 I remember being very happy when motherboard manufacturers changed from jumpers to dip switches.

Hands-down weirdest x86 board and CPU I ever worked on. 1995 felt like I was working on alien technology. Alaris boards and CPU fab by IBM microelectronics. Had to replace an SMT resistor on the first batch of NxPCI boards, good times!

The V30 was fully 16 bit like the intel 8086 and was a drop in replacement.

Emily now

@@vasilisvita ywnbaw

*dudette

@@dillonh321 He has XY chromosomes and always will.

@@membrillo1896 Bigot

Without NexGen, AMD wouldn’t be where they are now. If they had not have bought the company & rebadged the RISC architecture of the next generation NexGen processor as the K6, then they would probably be lagging behind Intel further than they were in the Bulldozer days until Ryzen.

Intel iAPX 432, the Ada machine!

he gets creeped out by you simps thats why he stopped

@@Freestyle80 now you know why

how did he fix it

@@chairwood he took classes with Steve from GamersNexus

Funfact it was only 133 😅

@@stephanking681 Nuh-uh. I still got this thing around somewhere. It was a *Pentium-Rated PR200+ clocked at 166 MHz with a 66 MHz FSB.* Back then it was an actual upgrade from my Intel Pentium-S 133MHz. These clock speeds are absolutely hilarious these days. 😂

Emily now unfortunately...

@@SahilSingh-ov6qtget outta here with your negativity

The pin count. You do not want a very long centipede CPU.

shes Emily now

@@vasilisvita He*

@@vasilisvita lol

whole video seemed like a lead-in to VIA, Vortex (S3), and Geode (AMD) but didn't make it over the line...

@@poofygoof Gee, thanks... now I have a few more processor to add to my collection :D but nah, thanks genuinely. I had forgotten about some of these. Geode in particular. I don't remember Vortex though but sounds interesting.

What happened? I don't see nothing

Emily now

Emily now.

He was taking estrogen lol

*Emily

😂

If AMD had not acquired NexGen, then they probably wouldn’t be anywhere near where they are nowadays as they scrapped the K5 successor that they had designed in-house for the NexGen RISC architecture CPU that they rebadged as the K6.