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To: Patrick Gainer who wrote (4084)	1/21/1998 2:50:00 PM
From: Edward Smyth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

Message from Patrick Gainer on Jan 21 1998 1:46PM EST >And they were right. MIPS is all but dead today. >Oh sure the instruction set lives on in the embedded >processor market but that is because of the efforts of >the Japanese foundries. The MIPS company which exists >inside SGI will be gone before the year 2000. And SGI can make a lot of money off the royalties from that embedded market. The foundries are probably better than MIPS at designing all the many variations for different customers, but the MIPS group is still needed to tie the 6 (or so) foundries together and set overall instruction set standards (eg the new MIPS-V and MDMX). I don't see any reason for SGI to get rid of MIPS, even if the SGI product line moves completely to Merced or something else. (Just as I can't see any reason to sell off A/W or Cosmo software - so long as they are profitable and run themselves. The one possible reason is if they need a lot of cash in a hurry, but even then they have a lot already in the bank - possibly too much.) SGI cannot switch from MIPS for their machines before 2000. Even if they are going to go with Merced, the first chips will only be out in 1999. I reckon at least 4-5 years to port OS and move all existing customers to the new architecture. Anyway, they are already talking about Origins 2 generations away (SN-2) to be delivered in 2002. SN-2 will come in two versions: general-purpose SN-2 and floating-point optimized SN-2v, with vector architecture. See scd.ucar.edu scd.ucar.edu I doubt SGI/Cray will want to give up control of the design of their own CPUs. Ed PS: AFAIK SGI had yet to commit to Merced at all. IRIX-machines will continue to be MIPS-based, and the new NT box will be Pentium-II. PPS: How many chips did MIPS sell in 1997? I believe they passed the 35 million mark, but does anyone know by how much?

To: Patrick Gainer who wrote (4084)	1/22/1998 12:56:00 PM
From: Alexis Cousein	Respond to of 14451

>Oh sure the instruction set lives on in the embedded >processor market but that is because of the efforts of >the Japanese foundries. That has always been MIPS's very business model, so it's not a coincidence. I've discussed it here a number of times already... For a 'dead' microprocessor architecture, it's quite a feat for MIPS to have its manufacturing partners --I'm sure I don't have to remind you that MIPS has no foundry, by its very charter, and sells everything through other foundries; even the SGI machines use NEC-manufactured chips -- sell 44 million chip units in a year -- second to only Intel.