MIPS Technologies Inc is due to upgrade its 64-bit R4000 chip with an R4400 version offering a major performance boost this week, and is pitching the chip at the desk top. Top rating on the single-chip, superpiplined R4400 is 113 SPECmark89 at 150MHz, positioning it to compete against performance leaders like IBM Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co and Digital Equipment Corp. The R4400 will be made and sold by MIPS’s six semiconductor partners: Integrated Device Technology Inc, LSI Logic Corp, NEC Electronics Inc, Performance Semiconductor Corp, Siemens AG and Toshiba Corp. Like the R4000, the 2.3m-transistor 4400 comes in three iterations: the 179-pin PC, supporting only primary on-chip cache, aimed at the low-end desktops and embedded controls; the 447-pin SC, built with two primary 16Kb caches and supporting an optional off-chip secondary cache of 4Mb, and the MC for multi-processor configurations. Small quantities are already being sampled and volume production starts to ramp in January. Pricing is being left to the six semiconductor makers.
