Sun Rivals Blast SPARCstation 2 in UNIX TODAY!

[Chuck Musciano]

> On page 88 of the Nov 12 issue of Unix Today there is an article titled
> "Sun Rivals Blast SPARCstation 2".  I'll list a few quotes from the
> article and hopefully someone out there familiar with the SPARC
> architecture will comment on their accuracy.

What did you expect, a hearty round of congratulations? :-)

Seriously, the comments from DEC and HP should be viewed as nothing more
than attempts to defuse Sun's product announcement.  While I cannot speak
about specific technical details of SPARC and when the CMOS versions will
tap out, it should be pointed out that other SPARC technologies are either
shipping or on the way.  FPS Computing is shipping ECL SPARC systems, and
hopes to have 65 MHz, 60 MIPS chips available soon.  Other vendors are
working on superscalar SPARC architectures.  SPARC is far from dead.

I wonder why DEC didn't comment on the failure of MIPS to produce an ECL
MIPS chip, leading to the cancellation of the DECStation 6000, and forcing
DEC to turn to yet another architecture, its internal E-VAX architecture.

There is plenty of innovation in the world of SPARC, thanks to the fact
that Sun made SPARC available to many different silicon foundries.  DEC
cannot innovate on MIPS, since they don't control the company that makes
the chips.  SPARC innovation will occur as different companies try to
offer better products to the SPARC system vendors.

Chuck Musciano				ARPA  : chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
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