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From: cprice@mips.COM (Charlie Price)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: R4000 "announcement"
Message-ID: <45759@mips.mips.COM>
Date: 11 Feb 91 00:55:32 GMT
References: <90@shasta.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@mips.COM
Reply-To: cprice@mips.COM (Charlie Price)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc
Lines: 38

In article <90@shasta.Stanford.EDU> 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. If I recall correctly,
>some of their competitors took legal action against them. To this day,
>such "pre-announcements" from IBM cause competitors to accuse them
>of 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 ?

This is certainly a valid question,
though the comparison to IBM seems a significant stretch to me.

We are talking about what the R4000 will be like.
We aren't saying when our partner's might be willing
to sell them or what they might choose to charge.
This is at least somewhat different than making a product
announcement that says samples will be available in N months
where N>6, for instance.

The R4000 had generated a lot of speculation and rumor
(so what else is new in the chip-design biz?)
and a lot of it was simply wrong.
I think that at least one of the reasons for saying something
before a product announcement was that people here thought it
was a very bad idea to let such incorrect rumors float around for long.
People were expecting *something*, but we aren't ready to make
a product announcement.

I agree that incomplete information of something that you can't
get your hands on, or get good "real measurements" for
is annoying to technical folks.
It is annoying to me to not be able to talk about it very much, too.
-- 
Charlie Price    cprice@mips.mips.com        (408) 720-1700
MIPS Computer Systems / 928 Arques Ave. / Sunnyvale, CA   94086-23650