Almost everyone’s desktop or laptop computer has a derivative of the Intel x-86 architecture as its central brain.
About 25 years ago, academics declared the x-86 architecture doomed, and started development of new architectures, including RISC and VLIW.
I was on the design team of most of the RISC and VLIW projects designed to replace the x-86 architecture, including MIPS, IBM Power PC and Intel Itanium. Despite being engineering successes, all of the new architectures were doomed from the start from a marketing point of view. Because there was a huge legacy x-86 software base, and because there was never anything wrong with x-86 that couldn’t be fixed.
As a result of listening to clueless academics, companies like IBM, Intel and Motorola threw tens of billions down the drain. The founder of Compaq (Rod Canion) went from being the most successful CEO in history, to unemployed in less than two years – because he listened to academics’ BS about microprocessors. Even Intel wasted billions of dollars trying to kill their own architecture, and then fell behind AMD for a few years. All because they listened to blowhards in academia, instead of staying focused on their core competence.
Academics occasionally provide some useful information, but their primary job is obtain funding and recognition. And that normally requires turning the BS up to volume 11.
