Expanding on its announcement that it would be joining Motorola Inc in developing a 100 MIPS ECL version of the 88000 RISC chip set to be used as the basis for new top-end machines in its product family, Data General Corp president Ed de Castro commented, Our commitment to the 88000 architecture is a key element in our corporate strategy of providing the industry’s finest standards-based computer and communications products. The Motorola CMOS 88000 chip set and the ECL version that Data General will develop provide computer users with mainframe computer performance at personal computer price/performance levels: We believe they will become the dominant core building blocks for systems designed to run the Unix operating system. But in order to allay the fears of existing users, de Castro adds While we plan to be in the forefront of developing new families of products based on this new RISC technology, at the same time we will continue to provide our customers with new generations of higher performing proprietary products. Both families of products will benefit from the same semiconductor technologies. We will also provide a migration path for our customers who would like to take advantage of this new technology. Data General, which has a good track record in implementing high-power processors in silicon with its Eclipse MVs, will design the chip set at its Westboro, Massachusetts headquarters, Motorola will manufacture the ECL 88000 in Phoenix, Arizona, and market the product worldwide through its Microprocessor Products Group in Austin, Texas. The ECL version is expected to be available in 1991 and the planned set will include an instruction set processor, memory manager, cache controller, system controller and system bus interface.
