MIPS Computer Systems is saying that R4000-based Advanced RISC Computing systems running Open Desktop and Windows NT will begin to appear after the middle of next year, and bets are on as to who will be first to market. Hardware will be in place around the beginning of next year – MIPS is to deliver fully-functional R4000 CPUs to its partners in December – it’s the Advanced Computing Environment software that will be last out of the stalls, especially with the switch to or accomodation of Unix System V. July is being bandied about as the time for completed offerings: Santa Cruz Operation Inc and Microsoft Corp are currently on schedule to deliver within a month of each other, insiders say. MIPS’ partners, which will manufacture the R4000, are Integrated Device Technology Inc, LSI Logic Corp, NEC Electronics Inc, Performance Semiconductor Corp and Siemens Components Inc. Prices for the parts will be around $1,000 in 1,000-up quantities, the suppliers say. Clock speed on the R4000 will go to 75MHz next year, while a 100MHz part with 64Kb cache is slated for 1993. Furthermore – and as reported – MIPS is already working on an R5000 successor. That’ll incorporate superscalar technology, speculative and out-of-order execution, fewer branch and other delays, plus victim cache, which will reduce the duplication of tasks now undertaken by regular caching operations: no time scales were offered. Early versions of ACE’s Open Desktop and Windows NT operating systems from Santa Cruz and Microsoft were shown running on the R4000 at the launch: along with MIPS’ own RISC/os Unix implementation. MIPS says the R4000’s 64-bit functionality offers full binary compatibility for applications running on its existing 32-bit CPU implementations. MIPS also announced 20 development tools for the R4000, including its C RISCompiler and system programmers package. The latter includes input-output drivers and costs from $8,000. At the R4000 launch, MIPS revealed that it is also working on a low-power implementation of the current R3000 RISC – currently drawing 10W – for notebook computer builders. And, now that it has overcome some of the supply problems that have bedevilled its ECL efforts, the R6000 ECL RISC will be getting some enhancements, MIPS says, and a multi-processing box based around that part is planned.
