Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!vsi1!wyse!mips!mark
From: mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Purchasing Agents and Pontiffs
Message-ID: <19913@obiwan.mips.COM>
Date: 17 May 89 17:48:52 GMT
References: <25395@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <28200315@mcdurb>
Reply-To: mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 72


 
     "It's not nearly as much fun building a supercomputer as it is
      simply inventing one" --- N. Lincoln


Often one hears people grumble that semiconductor companies don't offer
the "right" chips.   Amazingly, these folks know exactly what the world
desperately needs (or will need, or should need) and the semiconductor
companies are just too dumb to realize it.

It's easy to predict what will *really* motivate a semiconductor
company: giant Purchase Orders.  If IBM wanted 100,000 pieces per week
of 8Kx37 dual-port EEPROM (with +6.7 and -1.42 volt supplies), the chip
houses would trample one another in a mad frenzy to get the business.

For better or for worse, a semiconductor company would much rather have
a big purchase order than a (possibly) Good Idea.  Abundant numbers of
self-appointed gurus will gladly predict "what the world needs", but
chip houses prefer to know "what HP and DEC and Apple will buy a lot
of, right away".

They'd much rather listen to the Big Company Purchasing Agent than
the pontificating idea-man who claims to know what the future demand
might be.  At least the purchasing agent can deliver, WITH CERTAINTY,
a large market.

Therefore, the surest way to get a new chip design-idea into production
is to convince a high-volume purchaser (like DEC or HP or Compaq) to
demand it from the chip makers.  This strokes the semiconductor companies
exactly the right way: a practically guaranteed large market.  Other
approaches, such as having a suitably-credentialed expert gravely
pontificate on what the world really needs, will be far less successful.



However, semiconductor companies will occasionally be daring and try
something new & different.  And, for the most part, they've gotten a
bloody nose for their troubles.

Four or five years ago the rage was "intelligent memories".  It was
obvious to many sages that plain old read/write memories weren't
the path to the future, so "logic-in-memory" was needed.  Several
start-up companies were founded to exploit this trend.  Today, after
the passage of time, what survived?  FIFOs and Dual-port RAMs,
and that's all.  (I would claim that the dualport market is tiny,
extremely tiny).   And the startups?  They failed, mostly; or else
they shifted gears and now make plain vanilla read/write RAMs.

Next came cache-Tag RAMs.  Boy howdy, aren't these what the world
needs.  Go have a look at a Sun workstation, or an Apollo, or an HP,
or DEC, or MIPS, or Intergraph, or Data General, or an IBM.  Do the
same for IBM-PC's & clones, Apples, and Amigas.  The absence of
cache-Tag RAMs is staggering.  What an enormous number of system
designs and designers that omitted the "right" part.

AMD, to their credit, has bravely introduced a Content Addressible
Memory.  System designers have been clamoring for CAMs for a very
long time; now we'll see whether or not CAMs will find a niche
in real (not paper) system designs.  I certainly hope AMD is wildly
successful with this part; it'd encourage further innovation.

Today one hears that "what we need" is mega-bandwidth main memories
and/or interconnects.  "It's time" the main memories did more
than they do now.  Lots of people agree, I'm sure.  The trick is,
to get Unisys and Compaq and HP to agree, and to have _them_ demand
it from TI and Hitachi and Performance Semi and Oki and Micron and
Toshiba and Philips and Motorola and ...
-- 
 -- Mark Johnson	
 	MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
	...!decwrl!mips!mark	(408) 991-0208