Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdahl!ems!quest!zeno!gene
From: gene@zeno.MN.ORG (Gene H. Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: How the Japanese will win the MIPS wars with SPARC
Message-ID: <58@zeno.MN.ORG>
Date: 2 Sep 88 04:30:17 GMT
Reply-To: gene@zeno.UUCP (Gene H. Olson)
Organization: Smartware Consulting, Minneapolis, MN
Lines: 77

For some time now, I have been studying the available RISC
architectures and have come to (what is to me) a startling
and inescapable conclusion.   The Japanese will win the
RISC wars, they will win it with SPARC because SPARC will
be cheaper, and will have equal or better performance than
the others.

The logic is as follows:

*	The Motorola, Intel, MIPS, SPARC, HP, and IBM RISC
	architectures are incredibly similar.  In their basic
	instruction sets, none of them has any significant
	advantages over the other.

	All of them have a 32 bit register-to-register architecture.
	All of them have between 16 and 32 addressible registers.
	All of them are capable of 1.1 -> 1.5 cycles per instruction.
	All of them have similar virtual memory schemes for accessing
	the first 2 GB of user memory.
	
	Lets face it guys, you just can't do that much different
	with hardware instruction decoding.

*	What ultimately will make these machines faster is memory
	technology.   Particularly cache memory technology.
	
	The Japanese know memory technology very well.

*	All of these architectures, except SPARC is proprietary.

	The US manufacturers who own the other architectures will
	attempt to take advantage of their propretary architectures
	to make high profits on their customers who are locked into
	those architectures.  In particular they will not allow
	second source agreements until it is too late,  and will
	milk their latest designs as cash cows to amuse stockholders,
	and justify development of the next generation.

*	No one will take a processor architecture seriously unless
	it has been designed in the US.
	
	This is a stupid and inane reality, like the reality that
	women are paid less than men, but it is true nonetheless.

*	The Japanese will embrace SPARC with a singular ferocity.

	The Japanese will realize that SPARC is their only opportunity
	to challenge the world market.  They will sieze that opportunity
	captializing on their current advantage in memory technology.
	Their desire to cooperate within domestic industry, and their
	classic long-term outlook will cause them to produce a range
	of extremely compatible and price competitive products.

*	The US companies will do nothing.

	The US companies will see the awful truth in plenty of time
	to avoid it, but given the choice between high short-term
	profits, and intelligent long-term decisions will choose
	the former.

*	Driven by price realities in the market, OEMs throughout the
	world will choose Japanese SPARC processors.

*	Japanese SPARC will predominate.

QED

A word to the wise is sufficient.

-----------

In case you are wondering, I have no affilitation with any of
the above manufacturers.

Gene H. Olson
Smartware Consulting
gene@zeno.mn.org
amdahl!bungia!zeno!gene