Xref: utzoo comp.sys.m88k:418 comp.arch:18810 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.m88k,comp.arch Subject: Re: Tektronix shutdown & move away from 88k's?? Message-ID: Date: 28 Oct 90 16:25:04 GMT References: <1536@ftc.framentec.fr> <1990Oct19.120218.9450@canterbury.ac.nz> <15497@hydra.gatech.EDU> <2176@lupine.NCD.COM> <42310@mips.mips.COM> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Followup-To: comp.arch Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 127 Nntp-Posting-Host: teachh In-reply-to: mash@mips.COM's message of 23 Oct 90 02:22:26 GMT Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.55.4 of Thu Nov 23 1989 on athene (berkeley-unix) [ ... Tek is out of 88K based systems -- poor 88k ... ] Note that I am redirecting followups to comp.arch, because the alleged demise of the 88k is not longer the sole subject of this thread. On 23 Oct 90 02:22:26 GMT, mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) said: mash> In article <2176@lupine.NCD.COM> rfg@NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) mash> writes: rfg> I think this is pretty close to the mark. While I would not call rfg> the 88k doomed, any more than I would call, say, the Intergraph rfg> Clipper doomed, or the AMD29000, I think it has missed the chance rfg> to gain any sizeable market penetration. I think you'll find a rfg> trend in the industry toward clustering around 2 or 3 architectures rfg> (as we have really always done: 8080/z80 and 6502, 80x86 and 680x0, rfg> etc.). Unless something really strange happens, you'll see the rfg> SPARC and MIPS chips float to the top of the heap. The rest of the rfg> pack is left to niche markets or oblivion. mash> I don't know what the true metric is: chip unit volume, system mash> unit volume, or total value. Well, if we are comparing chips it is probably total value of chips shipped. Number of chips shipped is also another good metric, and probably we want to see both numbers, because they say different things. Given that CPU&support chips are a small fraction of system cost, it seems silly to decide the popularity of a chip architecture on the unit or sales volume of the systems it goes into. rfg> The last time I heard, MIPS was still a little (basically one rfg> product) company that was bleeding red ink. Also, the last thing I rfg> heard about DEC's push in the (MIPS-based) RISC business was that rfg> they were really not selling very many DECstations at all. Well, MIPS has got the DEC account. That is by itself interesting; actually *very* interesting; and DEC is selling fairly well, even if other parts of the company are doing not so well. After all, as some business weekly suggested some time ago, MIPS' business is basically technology licensing, like Adobe, not products. mash> Of course, some facts would help here: 1) MIPS sells machines mash> ranging from $9K desktops thru $150K servers, and has cranked out mash> quite a few system products in a few years. Incidentally, why not make a MIPS PC/AT compatible? I mean, a machine that has an R3000 chip set instead of a 386 chip set, and is otherwise identical (can use the same peripherals, boards, cages, etc...). I think that 386 compatibility would easily be done with a 386 plug in board (instead of doing the opposite, like Everex and others, who put with good success an 88k or 29k onto a plug in board) and VP/ix or DOSmerge. It would be extraodinarily inexpesive -- I guess that an R3000 chip set would be cheaper than a 386/486 chip set. I would believe that going for the 8088/80286/80386 motherboard replacement market would be nice, and could provide the needed volume for MIPS, or AMD or Motorola, or SPARC, or the ARM, or anybody else. If somebody says that the PC/AT motherboard technology is not well suited to running high speed RISC chips, please tell me why the 486 seems competitive with such high speed RISC chips when running in PC/AT type motherboards (ISA or EISA). Also, please tell me in which way it is different from motherboard technology in the new Sun SPARC machines, except that the letter do not have that many slots :-). mash> We do have 700+ people, and have done >$100M so far in 1990. mash> (This is NOT big, of course, but it's not a little 1-product mash> company.) This is *miniscule*. Many regional car dealerships, or Coca Cola distributors, or McDonald's licensees, have substantially higher turnovers and profits in the USA. Naturally it is interesting that MIPS are doing 100M/700 == 150K dollars per employee on average. That they are not posting huge profits is simply a miracle (I know better of course). Also consider Dell, or CompuAdd, or many of the players in the IBM PC clone market. By comparison with them, MIPS is pretty small, and does not have comparable growth rates or profits; it has substantially higher turnover per employee though. mash> 2) MIPS has designed both CMOS and ECL chipsets of various kinds, mash> and has all kinds of technology-license products, as well as lots mash> of software products, both of its own, and third-party. Ok, ok, John Mashey, we know you are darn good. We know, OK? :-). Not only that, you are the only ones, apart from SPARC, that have licensed your thing to many second sources. You are also "open"! mash> 3) We just announced results for last quarter, and I'd hardly call mash> it bleeding red ink (slight profit), although life is certainly mash> not easy out there right now for almost everybody in this mash> business. Including even the above mentioned clone makers. 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? The justification given was that it is expected that CMOS chips will soon reach the same speeds, and the window of opportunity for an ECL based CPU has been reestimated from half a dozen years to one or two, which is too little. Too bad, because I love ECL. mash> It doesn't take much arithmetic to see what happens when you have, mash> for instance, 20 $150K computers you'd like to ship, and each is mash> missing one chip..... $3M takes a big byte from a quarter, at our mash> size. That is why MIPS had better be a technology company. No matter how much liquidity they have, big oligopolists can make their customers pay for their suppliers' mistakes better. mash> Well, do note that MIPS also has plenty of money in the bank, mash> although hardly in this league. As I think another poster noted, mash> the web of partnerships, relationships, investors, etc, around mash> MIPS is much bigger than MIPS itself. Both would melt in ten seconds if MIPS looked like being a loser. Fortunately MIPS looks like being a winner. -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk