From: coolidge@sirius.aux.apple.com (John L. Coolidge)
Subject: Re: 68050
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 22:51:17 GMT
Reply-To: coolidge@apple.com
Organization: Open Systems Development, Porting&I/O Group, Apple Computer, Inc.,Summary:

maynard@leah.msc.cornell.edu (Maynard J. Handley) writes:
>>> no offense).  I was talking about speed in the sense of IBM RISC based
>>> workstations that use IBM RISC chips.  Get the idea??? Joe C.
>>
>>And the R4000 or the Alpha aren't fast? The Intel P5 and P6 won't be
>>fast? Motorola couldn't come out with another generation of chips that
>>are as fast as the IBM RISC chips?

>The RS6000 was here beginning of last year. Pentium isn't here yet, and
>won't be close to an RS6K when it arrives. Alpha isn't here yet. R4000 is
>here but all benchmarks I've seen put it at slower than an RS6K machine.
>Sure Motorola could design a new faster chip. Why waste another two years.

The fast RS6000s that exist now are multichip designs, which wouldn't
work well for a mass-market system. However, the architecture had lots
of promise for redesign (thus creating PowerPC) to allow for fast
single-chip designs.

At the time of the alliance, the Alpha was either not announced or had
been just announced. It probably was never in the running.
Politically, it would probably be impossible for Apple to base its
next hardware generation on Intel processors. The R4000 is a nice
chip, but at the time there were grave doubts about MIPS' survival. In
addition, MIPS (even now) has nowhere near the resources to pour into
chip design that IBM does. The Sparc might have been a decent
alternative, but in mid-1991 the Sparc was mired in uncertainty. Even
now, the Sparc line is pretty sluggish comparatively. Finally, HP's
Precision Architecture line might have been interesting -- it's fast,
it exists now, and it sells pretty well. The decision to go with IBM
rather than HP certainly had marketing/political considerations;
technically, they're both not too bad.

As for Motorola, the 680x0 line clearly has potential, but it's taking
too long to mature. The 88xxx line is more interesting, but again
there were grave doubts about Motorola's ability to scale the line
fast enough to compete with other RISC processor lines.

The real question is going to be: how fast can Apple/IBM/Motorola
scale the PowerPC line compared to how fast Intel can scale the 80x86
family (P5, P6)? The 601 should be about the same speed as the P5, but
first shipping machines will be about a year later. However, there's
hope of the 602/3 happening before the P6. The 620 should happen
before the P7. The second and third generation PowerPC chips should be
significantly faster than the respective Intel chips.

I still have doubts about the Sparc family. SuperSparc and HyperSparc
have pushed out the line, but it looks like superhuman engineering
was required. How fast will newer processors appear? This is
important given that the 601 should be faster than current Sparc
processors (and significanly cheaper). Similarly, the R4000 is great,
but when will we see an R500? Alpha is really hot (figuratively and
literally -- the chips need lots of cooling), but the current silicon
is hideously expensive (I've heard quantity pricing of >$1,000 per
chip). Can you see Apple trying to enter the mass market with a chip
costing that much? Again, the HP-PA is a contender, but you don't get
the market push and interest (and funding) with HP that you do with IBM.

The next few years in the CPU business are going to be interesting...

--John

        Normal guys always let me down. Sickos don't bother me.
        They're committed.
                -- Catwoman, _Batman_Returns_

+++John L. Coolidge++++++++++++++++coolidge@apple.com+++++++++++++++++++++++
I speak for myself, not for Apple Computer. Copyright 1992 John L. Coolidge.
Copying allowed only if attributed, and if all copies may be further copied.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware