Despite the US and European infatuation with RISC technology, with most major semiconductor makers and many computer companies either announcing products or mounting research projects, the concept has been virtually ignored by Japanese semiconductor companies. Fujitsu is of course a manufacturing partner with Sun Microsystems on the Sparc RISC, but the work was done in the US. And Toshiba resells the Sun-4 workstation and is planning to co develop a Sparc laptop, the MIPS Computer machines are sold by several Japanese firms, and RISC products from Japanese subsidiaries of other US firms such as Advanced Micro Devices have appeared at recent shows in Tokyo. But NEC Corp is the only Japanese company that will admit to developing its own RISC chip, and that may never make it to market, according to a research manager at NEC’s MicroElectronics Laboratory. The experimental chip is fabricated in conservative (if not obselete) three micron design rules, rather than the sub-micron geometries that are being used in current semiconductor products.
