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From: zalman@mips.com (Zalman Stern)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Lead time to a working system. (Was: Will NeXT survive?  Grow with the times?)
Message-ID: <3411@spim.mips.COM>
Date: 11 May 91 12:34:48 GMT
References: <1991Apr30.191117.4373@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> <576@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM>
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In article <576@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> lm@slovax.Eng.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy) writes:
>umh@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
>[Marketing rumours about future ACE based hardware.]
>
[...]
>
>Let's suppose that I could get one [R4000] in my grubby little paws today.
>I still have to build a motherboard, a case, all that glob.  Call it
>9 months of a very agressive schedule.
>I still have to have an OS that runs on the thing.  Call it another 9
>months on an extremely aggresive schedule.

An appropriate word for companies which don't aggressively pipeline this
process in the 90's is "roadkill." You can simulate all this stuff without
working chips. Here's a quote from HP's "CMOS PA-RISC Processor for a New
Family of Workstations", Mark Forsyth et al. (this years ISSCC
proceedings):

    Extensive pre-release simulation using a highly evolved set of system
    level, chip level, and transistor level verification methodologies was
    employed to ensure fully functional first silicon. The HP-UX operating
    system was booted and running within four hours of recieving packaged
    first silicon CPU chips.

If hardware is waiting for software, then something is very wrong.
According to some hardware folks I talk to occasionally, doing the board
and such is relatively easy. I don't know about Sun, but MIPS puts a lot of
work into simulation. On the other hand, all this technology only helps
after you figure out what to build in the first place...
-- 
Zalman Stern, MIPS Computer Systems, 928 E. Arques 1-03, Sunnyvale, CA 94088
zalman@mips.com OR {ames,decwrl,prls,pyramid}!mips!zalman     (408) 524 8395
  "Never rub another man's rhubarb" -- the Joker via Pop Will Eat Itself