Silicon Graphics speeds up processor development
Reuters Story - May 11, 1997 15:11
FINANCIAL US ELC DPR SGI 6701.T 6502.T INTC V%REUTER P%RTR
By Samuel Perry
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 11 (Reuter) - Silicon Graphics Inc.
said it will unveil a stepped-up microprocessor development
schedule Monday aimed at boosting use of its products by large
technical and commercial customers.
The accelerated schedule aims to speed up Silicon Graphics'
high-performance chips at a time when many analysts are
concerned the company's traditional lead in certain powerful
systems is under threat from competitors.
Intel Corp., which supplies most of the chips which serve
as the brains of personal computers, is taking aim with its
Pentium and MMX technologies at the graphics-intensive market
Silicon Graphics has long dominated.
Silicon Graphics has sought to keep hold of the high-end of
the computing-intensive market, however, and bought
supercomputer pioneer Cray Research last year.
Several years ago, Silicon Graphics acquired MIPS - a
semiconductor design group which now develops both its
top-of-the-line chips and much cheaper consumer chips.
Under SGI, MIPS processors have become the highest volume
chips in the specialized category known as reduced instruction
set computing (RISC) chips since they began being sold to video
games makers like Nintendo and Sony.
The new roadmap charts three successive families of chips
which reflects a change in design focus brought about by John
Bourgoin, who became president of Silicon Graphics' MIPS Group
microprocessing arm last year.
When MIPS was acquired by SGI, it had one design team for
high-end chips, another for desktop processors and a third for
the embedded and consumer laptop market.
"All three of our design teams are now designing high-end
microprocessors," said James MacHale, a product manager at the
Mountain View, Calif.-based computer maker.
The new family includes three processors based on the
64-bit design used by its current R10000 processors, in which
computer instructions handled by the processor can be 64
characters in length.
Silicon Graphics introduced 64-bit processors five years
ago, and many of its competitors are just now migrating to the
technology from 32-bit architectures which are less powerful
and efficient.
The new R12000 chip will reach volume production in the
first half of calendar 1998 and will enable clock speeds to be
increased to 300 megahertz from 200 on the R10000, along with
other performance improvements.
Two further microprocessor families -- codenamed the H1 and
H2 -- are due to follow and are targeted to boost Silicon
raphics' position in the commercial and technical markets where
it hopes to gain share.
"The H1 chip will be the world's highest bandwidth
microprocessor when it's introduced, based on what we know
about what our competitors are doing in the same time frame,"
said MacHale.
The H1 chip is designed to have greater than five gigabytes
per second of bandwidth to main memory, six times the bandwidth
of the company's current R1000 chip and is a 10 times increase
over current Intel Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors,
according to SGI.
The H1 is due to hit volume production in the first half of
calendar 1999 and the H2, which will be designed for moving
data rapidly between single and multiple processor systems,
will be in the 2000-2001 time frame.
Some analysts are concerned that the emphasis on power at
the top end will not be easily adaptable to the volume sales of
MIPS chips to video games, for example, which has become an
important business for SGI.
"They're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place,"
said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Dataquest, noting SGI
needs to sell their larger machines on the basis of raw
performance, but it is difficult to scale down this to volume
chips that sell for around $20 each.
Silicon Graphics, whose MIPS unit designs the chips, said
it will rely on partners such as NEC Corp. and Toshiba
Corp. , who manufacture the chips, to help produce the
cheaper high-volume products. |
