NeXT cubes or slabs.

From: George Currie <g_at_kurico.com>
Date: Fri Jun 26 14:37:26 1998

> > Sounds cool. Many of the greatest design concepts are stopped... not
> > because of bugs, not because of tiredness of developers, but because of
> > the only thing obstructing innovation: Money.
>
> Actually, the 88000 was killed off because Sun went with the SPARCs for
> their next generation of machines, the Sun-4 series. SGI was not much of a
> player at the time, and NeXT never really got a good foothold in the
> workstation market. Data Generals AViiON machines, at least the first
> series, were the only 88000 based boxes to hit the market, and they failed
> horribly.

IIRC, Sun went with Sparc because Motorola was dragging their heals with
regards to RISC. It was my understanding at the time that Sun really didn't
want to go their own way, they just couldn't make Mot get off their butt's. By
the time Mot came around and came out with the 88000, it was too late. All
the major workstation manufacturers had already picked their camps.

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.
Which would have had some interesting implications for the PPC since it would
have been logical for Apple to also utilize the 88000.

Also, wasn't SGI already commited to the MIPS camp already (i.e. before the
88000 was available)?

George
Received on Fri Jun 26 1998 - 14:37:26 BST