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From: kim@amdahl.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Atari Transputers ? & A British ST/Amiga Rival ?
Message-ID: <15906@amdahl.amdahl.com>
Date: Fri, 9-Oct-87 20:54:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: amdahl.15906
Posted: Fri Oct  9 20:54:53 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Oct-87 17:44:25 EDT
References: <8709181728.AA13664@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <1623@gryphon.CTS.COM> <975@csustan.UUCP>
Organization: Amdahl Corporation,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Lines: 53
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.atari.st:5601 comp.sys.misc:920 comp.sys.amiga:9240

In article <975@csustan.UUCP>, dave@csustan.UUCP (david j wells) writes:
> 
> Also the simpler silicon is much easier to develop.  Less time.  Less money.
> Fewer bugs.  (kind of like the diffference between coding a linked list v.
> coding a B-tree  ...)

That's for sure!  When I was working for MIPS Computer Systems on the R2000
chip, our very 1st silicon was almost 100% functional.  There were a couple
of layout problems that lead to an unexpected diode-like device in one area,
which resulted in a multiplier that wouldn't.

This was fortunate, because we didn't get packaged parts back from the fab
outfit until 12/23/85, and we had a contractual committment to deliver an
alpha prototype to an early customer.  We spent a day or so integrating the
chip into the board, and found a couple logic and timing bugs with it (the
board, not the chip).  The machine executed it's 1st instructions in the
wee hours of Christmas Day, and a new computer was born.

There was sufficient functionallity to demonstrate "significant technical
progress", as the contract required, and that customer sent us our first
revenues ... a check for $1.5 million!

Total time to R&D the R2000 was in the neighborhood of 9 months, not
counting the architectural work done at Stanford that pretty much defined
the MIPS architecture.

In case you're wondering, that 1st "program" was a series of instruction
test cases that indicated their progress by writing to a memory location
that was in reality a set of 8 leds.  Helluva lot to pay for a binary led
counter ... :-)!


> The complexity is moved into software (generally the compiler) and is
> therfore relatively trivial to modify (compared to fixing silicon).
> Can you say 386?  :-)

Since that 1st chip spin, a few more layout/fabbing problems were discovered,
and a small number of logic design bugs were found, so we ended up with a
couple more chip spins before we were satisfied with the part.  But that's
amazingly few for a ~100K gate chip!

BTW, several of the logic bugs we eventually did find were easy to get around
by having the compiler generate some "kluge" code ... no huhu, cobber!

/kim


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