Seizing the opportunity offered by Compaq Computer Corp’s resignation from the Advanced Computing Environment initiative (CI No 1,910), Santa Cruz Operation Inc yesterday steeled itself to announce the suspension of all of its MIPS Computer Systems Inc development work – effectively tendering its resignation from the ACE crowd. Santa Cruz says its decision was based primarily on Intel Corp’s success in catching up with the performance promised by the ACE environment, and that it will re-focus its Open Desktop Unix efforts on the forthcoming P5 80586 part. Intel has been quietly improving the performance of its next-generation iAPX-86 variant – which, now reportedly at over 100 MIPS, is more than equivalent to MIPS’ R4000 RISC – and brought forward delivery dates. The departure of Santa Cruz means ACE has now lost two of its main founder members – if MIPS’ submission to Silicon Graphics Inc isn’t counted – and at best can look only to the flirtatious attention of Digital Equipment Corp and Microsoft Corp, which are conducting their own love affair. The fallout was apparently precipitated by an ACE members meeting last Friday, at which it was decided to de-emphasise the whole Intel side of the equation. Compaq, it seems, had no stomach for a MIPS-only menu, and Santa Cruz found the prospect just as unappealing. So after a brief 12 months in existence, ACE has paddled itself up the Swanee, its dream of emulating the success of the personal computer revolution now surely just a pipe-dream. Among other members, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA now looks likely to follow DEC and move on to the Alpha RISC processors.
