Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!winchester!mash From: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Tektronix shutdown & move away from 88k's?? Message-ID: <42555@mips.mips.COM> Date: 31 Oct 90 00:44:04 GMT References: <42483@mips.mips.COM> <3886@acorn.co.uk> Sender: news@mips.COM Reply-To: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) Distribution: comp Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. Lines: 54 In article <3886@acorn.co.uk> astevens@acorn.co.uk (Ashley Stevens) writes: >In article <42483@mips.mips.COM> mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) writes: >->>mash> As is well-known, we are working hard with our colleagues at >->>mash> B.I.T. to improve yields on the ECL chips. >> >->>In the latest issue of Byte I read that BIT have *dumped* the R6000 >->>development. Am I hallucinating? ..... >->Yes, or Byte is. >Somewhere (I think it was either the latest issue of PCW, or the Computer >Guardian) I read that BIT had dropped the development of a special version >of the R6000, for DEC, and that the normal version was delayed. ARGH! I'm sure my polemic on being careful about the press passed this one coming the other way. Here's a great example of the warp factor in action: Basically, most of what was described is wrong.... 1) DEC DID say publicly that they'd cancelled an R6000-based product, although not necessarily future ECL ones, and certainly NOT MIPS-chip based things in general. (I mention this, because the press got that widely confused, in every conceivable way). 2) As far as I know, special version == normal version. I never heard of any special version of the R6000 for DEC, but if anyone KNOWS of one, please correct me. 3) Regarding "delay of the normal version", if that's supposed to mean that it wouldn't be available for a while, that's wrong. If it means that it's taken longer to get better yields than we'd like, or that its clock rate is not as high as we'd like, then that might make sense. Note that a lot of faster micros have been described in the literature, in detail .... but haven't shipped yet, or really have been cancelled... existence is a virtue. BTW, since it gets tiring fixing wrong stuff, for context: *commercial message on* the R6000 remains the fastest general-purpose microprocessor being shipped today. Although a few others may be in the same league on floating-point, depending on benchmark mix, it is 1.7X - 2X faster on integer than anything else currently shipping (according to SPEC data). We have an interesting internal example of why somebody might care: on an RC6280, running a gate-level simulator, simulating an approximately-1M-transistor chip, it takes 8 DAYS to boot UNIX from reset to single-user prompt . Note that such things are pure integer, don't vectorize, and are nontrivial to split up. It would be fun to run, for example, the SPEC benchmarks this way, except that it would take 1-2 years. *commercial off* -- -john mashey DISCLAIMER: UUCP: mash@mips.com OR {ames,decwrl,prls,pyramid}!mips!mash DDD: 408-524-7015, 524-8253 or (main number) 408-720-1700 USPS: MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086