Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!dg!mpogue
From: mpogue@dg.dg.com (Mike Pogue)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Criteria for comparing RISC processors
Message-ID: <165@dg.dg.com>
Date: 5 May 89 14:37:29 GMT
References: <2368@ogccse.ogc.edu> <1464@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU> <141@dg.dg.com> <156@dg.dg.com> <658@pitstop.West.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: mpogue@dg.UUCP (Mike Pogue)
Organization: Data General, Westboro, MA.
Lines: 20


  Some interesting points.  However, Sun (of all the vendors) has
the BIGGEST problem with vendor-to-vendor compatibility.

  Yes, Sun went to multiple vendors, but MIPS and the 88K can 
guarantee a much better compatibility story, because they don't
have (for example) three DIFFERENT implementations of multiprocessing.

  And when latency changes on a Functional Unit (like floating point)
in the future, the 88K register scoreboarding will allow performance
increases WITHOUT CHANGING THE BINARY.

  Sun networks ALREADY have a massive problem with Sun/3 and Sun/4
binaries required for everything you use.  Neither MIPS nor the 88K
have this problem.

Mike Pogue
Data General Corp

My opinions are my own....