EMC buys Data General

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Mon Aug 9 14:25:35 1999

At 08:42 PM 8/9/99 +0200, Hans wrote:
>What about MIPS recently de merged from SGI. Then there is ARM,
>Motorola, Intel if you count microprocessors (you listed Sparc) as
>opposed to microcontrollers which would add a whole slew of other
>companies like National, Microchip, Atmel...

The distinction (arbitrary I know) is companies that designed their own
architecture and built systems around it, not companies that adopted
someone elses architecture. People like ARM, Motorola, and Intel are chip
companies, not computer companies (although each has provided a computer
based around their architecture at one time.) SPARC, while it may be
considered a microprocessor with the advent of the "Tsunami" chip, prior to
that it was a multiple chip architecture and from the F8 discussions we all
know that a microprocessor is by definition a single chip :-)

Anyone else catch the benchmarks of the latest Athlon chip from AMD?
Dhrystone clocks it at 1974 MIPS (aka 1.974 GIPS!) Truely it boggles the
mind. I had to explain to our sysadmin how the uVAX 3900 sitting in my
office was about the speed of a 386/25 and he nearly choked.

--Chuck
Received on Mon Aug 09 1999 - 14:25:35 BST