Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!apple!oliveb!sun!chiba!khb
From: khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Languages Marketing -- MTS)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: HOT CHIPS conference
Message-ID: <113277@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 30 Jun 89 00:26:20 GMT
References: <596@megatek.UUCP> <112807@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <142@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman - SPD Languages Marketing -- MTS)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 74

In article <142@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl> roelof@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (R. Vuurboom) writes:
>
>
>Anybody care to tell us poor folks who couldn't attend more about
>the pearls and gems of wisdom that were delivered at the conference?

Well, perhaps the general chair (Robert Steward, 1658 Belvioir Drive,
Los Altos, CA 94022) can provide you with a means to order paper copies.

I am working from the schedule. I am not xrefing the papers
themselves. Sorry if I miss anyone.

Here was the scheulde, with a few comments:

1)	New RISC CPU's
	Cypress SPARC program overview (chips shipping, and coming)
	BIT's ECL SPARC (shipping samples)
	PRISMA's 4nsec SPARC

There was (believe it or not) an attempt made to get non-SPARC stuff.
But since Sun doesn't control the chip foundries efforts, they can
talk about ongoing projects irrespective of what it does to
workstation sales .... 

2)	RISC CPU updates

	Fujitsu SPARC chip set update (stuff)
	LSI MCT SPARC chip (new nifty MMU)
	88K family update  (now shipping in quantity)
	MIPS(co) architecture (no news)
	Clipper update (no news, just claim lots of units shipped)

3)	Kahan on Floating Point issues.

	As always, a fount of wisdom. This time he focused on how he
	helped screw up the 8087 register stack. Of course, the 8087
	is a great ieee chip .. it just was meant to be better.

4)	New Processor Architectures

	Intel i860 (shipping)

5)	FPU's

	ABACUS 3170/71 SPARC FPU (70 shipping, in SS-1; 71 soon)
	TI SPARC FPU (single chip; really rad divide and sqrt algorithms)
	LSI SPARC (improving all around, caught the TI trick too late?)
	MIPS 3010 (shipping in quantity)
	
6)	New CISC

	68040 (if you liked the 030 ...)
	i486 (if you liked the 386) now include FPU on board.
	NexGen (really,really fast 386 multichip solution ... not 
	        fully silicon yet)

7)	Embedded CPUs
	i960 (nicer than 860 ?, different at least)
	MS32Gx32 (shipping in quantity)
	AMD29000 (shipping)

8)	Graphics coprocessors
	TI TMS34020 and ..82 (graphics + FP)
	Sun GX processor (huge ASIC state machine; great performer)

9)	Compiler panel discussion
	Tom Pennello, Steve Jonson, Steve Glanville, Michael Tiemann
	Nothing new was revealed; old wounds reopened.
	

Keith H. Bierman      |*My thoughts are my own. Only my work belongs to Sun*
It's Not My Fault     |	Marketing Technical Specialist    ! kbierman@sun.com
I Voted for Bill &    |   Languages and Performance Tools. 
Opus  (* strange as it may seem, I do more engineering now     *)