Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!boulder!unicads!les From: les@unicads.UUCP (Les Milash) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: 88K vs. MIPS vs. SPARC vs. 386 Message-ID: <411@unicads.UUCP> Date: 2 May 89 15:36:24 GMT References: <13089@paris.ics.uci.edu> Reply-To: les@unicads.UUCP (Les Milash) Distribution: comp Organization: Unicad Boulder, CO Lines: 31 In article <13089@paris.ics.uci.edu> roy@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (John M.A. Roy) writes: >FYI, my rumor mill has it the Data General is dropping the 88K as their >CPU and are going to MIPS. This is a pretty reliable source. an RFmR: Why would they do that? (any guesses, anybody?) I mean, the MIPS chipset is Very Hot, I use it daily, but it seemed the 88K was too. Is it for compatability with all the other MIPSs out there? And it seems embarrasingly late to switch horses, given all the press... maybe they found a bug in the 88100 :-) ? some stupid and unrelated whining (sorry but it had to be said): The only thing I don't like* about the MIPS product line is that it seems awfully dumb to have an acronym, however cute, that omits a key negation ("Microprocessor _WITHOUT_ Interlocking Pipeline Stages"). Maybe there's a bar over the last 3 letters that ascii users can't type? I know (or think) they inherited the name from the Stanford or CalTech RISC group or somebody. Or maybe some marketing person came up with something else it stands for ("Microprocessor with Increasing Part Sales"? "May we Invest in a Porsche Soon"?) sorry. *i realize that my opinion holds little-to-no weight and is at this point completely unsolicited by anyone, including my employer (and maybe it's better that way) Lester Hey lightweight opinions! yeah! that's the ticket! you can change your mind with almost no overhead if nobody cares what you think anyway.