ALTHOUGH the battle lines on the software side at Comdex seemed to be drawn along operating system lines, on the hardware side the focus appeared to be the growing choice between reduced-instruction-set computing (RISC) and complex-instruction-set computing (CISC) that consumers are faced with.
The RISC evangelists promise greater performance and power than anything available from traditional CISC systems (read Intel and Intel-compatible) while the CISC team focuses on backward compatibility as a big selling point.
Without a doubt, the PowerPC represents the popular voice for the RISC alternative.
From the large tent outside the main convention hall where Apple, IBM and Motorola, the chip's creators, sponsored a display of various applications available on the various PowerPC platforms, to the individual booths that were showing off the newest PowerPC boxes, great effort went into creating a momentum to position the chip as the central processing unit of the future desktop.
However, Intel hit back with its passport programme.
By visiting four of more than 20 booths displaying Intel-based machines, passport carriers, identifiable by the distinct passport-like booklet hanging around their necks next to their Comdex badges, were seen rushing around the floor getting their passport stamped in order to cash in on the wealth of free software being given away by Intel.
Ultimately, the conflict seems rooted in near-religious rhetoric. In a document prepared by Apple comparing the Pentium and the PowerPC, the Pentium's backward register-compatibility with previous x86 processors and software is identified as a weakness because it constrains the chip's design.