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From: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: RISC v. CISC (really comments on many postings: LONG)
Message-ID: <7190@winchester.mips.COM>
Date: 27 Oct 88 22:38:01 GMT
References: <156@gloom.UUCP> <6865@winchester.mips.COM> <468@oracle.UUCP> <3404@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: mash@winchester.UUCP (John Mashey)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 29

In article <3404@pt.cs.cmu.edu> koopman@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Philip Koopman) writes:
>In article <468@oracle.UUCP>, csimmons@hqpyr1.oracle.UUCP (Charles Simmons) writes:
>> In article <6865@winchester.mips.COM> mash@winchester.UUCP (John Mashey) writes:
>> >As you note, not-yet-announced.  On the other hand, MIPS R3000s
>> >do 42K Dhrystones, and they're already in real machines, and vendors
>> >are quoting the CPUs at $10/mip, i.e., $200 for 25MHz parts.

>Hey, wait a minute.  You can't just spec the price of the CPU itself,
>you need to include the cost of other required chips (like cache controllers,
>MMU's, or whatever) when you say how much the CPU costs.  On some machines,
>you can't run without these extra components.

100% agree: I just don't know the rest of the numbers offhand.
In our case, the mMU & cache control are on-chip; these days, you
add an FPU (probably costs 1.5-2X the corresponding CPU),
and SRAM (which is where most of the money is), plus some fairly cheap
glue parts for the external memory interface.

There was no intention to make people think the entire CPU core costs $10/mip,
and if readers thought that, unthink it. I'd guess a whole CPU core
(CPU + FPU + MMU + cache control + cache + external memory interface)
currently costs about $70-$10/VUP for the kind of things you build in
systems [less for embedded systems, especially as the 4Kx16 & similar-shaped
SRAMs become more available.]
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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