26 Jun
1998
26 Jun
'98
8:36 a.m.
IIRC, Sun went with Sparc because Motorola was
dragging their heals with
regards to RISC.
Come to think of it, the 88000 was rather late in the game.
I just wanted to bring this up because the above
posting makes it sound like
Sun chose the Sparc _over_ the 88000. Had the 88000 been around when Sun
was ready with the 4 series, then all Sun's would be 88000 machines right
now.
I think they did choose it over the 88000, based on the Motorola's
tardiness. I was quite clear that the 68000 was running out of steam. I
would think it would be a logical decision to can the 88000 if it was not
ready. That is just a basic engineering decision that effects the entire
family of products. The rest of the Sun-4 architecture (SPARC) is not very
different from Sun-3 (OK, the MMU is a bit different) - many bigger Sun-3
boxes could actually turn into SPARC boxes with a CPU card change.
Also, wasn't SGI already commited to the MIPS camp
already (i.e. before the
88000 was available)?
I am sure they were thinking about it. The SGI shift from the 68000 to
MIPS occurred just about the same time that Sun shifted from the 68000 to
SPARC. I think the head of SGI (I forget his name) was a big RISC fanatic,
somehow tied to the MIPS architecture.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net