Intel Corp is reckoned to have scaled back its 80860 RISC programme, having failed to make that part a convincing workstation contender, with the level of future investment in it looking decidedly unclear. Although other architectures are only now beginning to catch up with the 80860’s floating-point performance and level of integration, for developers, creating optimised software to run on it was a tortuous struggle. Microprocessor Report editor Michael Slater observes that the 80860 missed its greatest opportunity – that of being the first RISC microprocessor to host Windows NT – because Microsoft Corp software engineers attempting to use the chip came to hate it with a passion.
