Hacker News Reader

it wasn't a total failure. the 860 and 960 were decent little engines that found a home in high performance computing and embedded applications that needed a little oomph. I worked on some 860 array products and certainly remember finding 960s in printers and other gear

View on HN

Trivia: The i960 was used to power Sega's highly successful Model 2 arcade board, which truly ushered in the era of 3D gaming* (with Daytona USA), and was used in the F-22 Raptor until it was later replaced with other CPUs.

* Certainly not the first 3D arcade hardware but arguably this along with Namco's MIPS-based System 22 (Ridge Racer, released a little before Daytona), was the inflection point that made 2D effectively obsolete.

Worked on an i860 Stratus machine in the early 90s - provided a key part of our distributed infra due to its FT capabilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com