Hewlett-Packard Co is seriously looking at putting the next generation of its Precision Architecture into the RISC stakes in competition with Sun Microsystems’ Sparc, MIPS Computer’s R series and the Motorola 88000 and Intel 80860. According to Electronic News, Hewlett has been negotiating with Hitachi Ltd and VLSI Technology Inc to fabricate the next generation processor for the merchant market, but – unlike Sun, which has been pushing the Sparc like mad, does not want to put a lot of effort behind the part itself, preferring to leave that to the two chip shops. The new generation Precision Architecture part has been dubbed PA Plus, and it will add some features cannibalised from Apollo Computer Inc’s Prism RISC design used in the Domain 10000 workstation, notably multiprocessing support. No-one at Hewlett was able to confirm or refute the story, and it is clearly not yet a done deal. The two would-be licensees are keen that Hewlett offer substantial systems support to customers for the new PA Plus chips, but the Cupertino company is thought to be leery about giving too much support to firms that might simply try to produce clones of its own machines. They would also expect Hewlett, which currently makes all its RISC processors itself, to take at least some of its requirement from the two second sources. Hewlett itself hopes to be in volume production of the new RISC – described as a sup erset of its Precision Ar chitecture – during the first quarter of next year.
