Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: R4000 "announcement"
Summary: what's the connection???
Message-ID: <1991Feb8.055009.9883@ico.isc.com>
Date: 8 Feb 91 05:50:09 GMT
References: <90@shasta.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 43

jackk@shasta.Stanford.EDU (jackk) writes:
> I read in a recent EE Times article that there are no working chips
> yet for the R4000. This type of pre-announcement is disturbingly
> reminiscent of IBM's "pre-announcement" of the 360/95 before
> there were even lab prototypes running...

Everything I've seen on the R4000 has been careful to point out that what
is being announced is *technology*, not a *product*.  I have seen no prices
for R4000's.  I have seen no promised delivery date for chips.

I don't see much similarity.

It is perhaps surprising that MIPS is willing to provide this much info
this early in the game.  (Perhaps they'd rather have the right info coming
from them than wrong guesses coming from their competitors?:-)

>...If I recall correctly,
> some of their competitors took legal action against them...

...because they pre-announced products, with price figures, which caused
problems for their competitors because people held off waiting for the
promised IBM product at the promised price instead of buying the real
products of the competitors.

Is this "pre-announcement"?  Is anyone really surprised to learn that MIPS
is working on a new chip, faster than the previous one???  (What other
possibilities are there?:-)

> [IBM] creating "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" in the marketplace to
> freeze out competition, yet we hear no such accusations against
> MIPS. Is it simply a matter of size ?

No, it's a matter of a completely different situation.  Study the details
a little more carefully before you get too upset.

With neither a price nor a delivery date, it's hard to see how MIPS has
announced anything to compete with existing products.  The only "FUD" I see
right now should be in the hearts of damnfool programmers who have given us
so much code assuming int==long==32-bits, and who are now seeing apoca-
lyptic visions sooner than they thought they might.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.