Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: RISC Amiga
Keywords: well there's going to be a RISC Mac!!
Message-ID: <15497@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 31 Oct 90 18:33:19 GMT
References: <1156@iceman.jcu.oz> <22914@grebyn.com>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 29

In article <22914@grebyn.com> ckp@grebyn.UUCP (Checkpoint Technologies) writes:
>In article <1156@iceman.jcu.oz> cpca@iceman.jcu.oz (C Adams) writes:
>>So what would we want a RISC Amiga to be based on, 88k? Sparc? i860? MIPS?

>Given the Amiga product philosphy of "inexpensive", I'd have to guess
>the AMD29K.  

Then again, Motorola just chopped prices on the 88k family, by a big chunk.
I think you can get a basic 88100 + 88200 * 2 for just over $100 now at
16MHz.  And there's this IDT version of the MIPS R3000 on the way out, with
on-chip cache and MMU, for about $30 in quantity.  The obvious advantage of
RISC chips from the beginning, more than architectural purity, has been the
small size of the fool things.  The freakin' MIPS R3000 is about 1/3 the
size of the 68030 even with MMU and reasonbly sized caches.  Not much bigger
or more complex than a 68000.  That means at the high end they can move into 
new chip technologies faster, and at the low end they can drop price faster.
Imagine what you could do with a CPU several times the performance of a 
68030 for the price of a 68000.  It would make one helluva C64 replacement
:-).  The flaw, of course, is that any new system will run UNIX, which
makes the CPU piece of the pie a rather small cost concern when you look at
memory, hard disk, casework, monitors, and all the other goodies every UNIX
system needs no matter what CPU is inside.

>First comes the logo: C H E C K P O I N T  T E C H N O L O G I E S      / /  

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
	Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold	-REM