cwpjr@cbnewse.att.com (clyde.w.jr.phillips) (12/06/90)
Could someone get the complete story of the Harris RTX situation ( Phil K? ) and post the summary. Right now I expect that it's still available but (marketing) de-emphasized, and won't become *REAL* cheap soon 'cause of Die size. That's all I've heard and I don't know if this is correct. The complete summary would also include Harris's stance on support, summary and status of the Design Contest, etc. I'd also welcome any discussion of creating "generic" FORTH engines using FPGA's that WOULD BE affordable on singles quantities. I beleive we are at the gate count with multi-funtional partitioning in these type "commodity" parts to open this discussion. I'll refrain from sheeding any tears till I know whether it's warranted or not... --Clyde P.S. The Zilog thing is does anyone have FORTH's for the Super Z-8, and did you hear Zilog upgraded the Z8 to have 16 bit math at < 2us for divides and multiplies. Their market research showed they could stem the tide toward 16bit parts with this move. They say this 20mhz part will handle implemeting a SCSI adapter now that it has 16bit math...
koopman@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Philip Koopman) (12/06/90)
In article <1990Dec5.170506.3438@cbnewse.att.com>, cwpjr@cbnewse.att.com (clyde.w.jr.phillips) writes: > Could someone get the complete story of the Harris RTX situation > ( Phil K? ) and post the summary. Right now I expect that it's > still available but (marketing) de-emphasized, and won't become > *REAL* cheap soon 'cause of Die size. That's all I've heard > and I don't know if this is correct. I am not a Harris spokesman (official or otherwise). But I have been keeping in touch, and believe this to be the current situation: - Fred Hawkes is now in charge of RTX. If you want _official_ information, contact him at (407) 724-7823. - The RTX support team is now 5 people. This is a "transition team", not a permanent support staff. In other words, the number is going to go down in the future. - Harris has plenty of RTX 2000's and RTX 2001A's tested and in-stock. The RTX 2010 introduction has been canceled. All planned enhancements and future commercial standard products have been canceled (including the RTX 4000). I would be surprised if prices were reduced because of manufacturing and support costs. "Unsupported" sales are not an option for a number of legitimate reasons. - Some day, Harris will stop manufacturing RTX 2000s. They have promised to give notice to customers to allow "end-of-life" buys. I expect that this event will correlate to stopping production of 80C286's made on the same fab line. - My personal opinion is that starting a new design with an RTX has a high risk of being left high-and-dry in some fashion. The most likely problems are: 1) you will need hardware or software support for some obscure problem and find that appropriate RTX expertise is unavailable from Harris; 2) you will underestimate your requirements or have insufficient cash when end-of-life buy is announced. - If you have the money, Harris will let you use the RTX core for standard-cell designs. They will probably license the RTX to you for use on someone else's fab, but probably for a lot of $$$. - I know little about the design contest, but I think that prizes for U.S. winners were awarded as promised. > I'd also welcome any discussion of creating "generic" > FORTH engines using FPGA's that WOULD BE affordable > on singles quantities. I believe we are at the gate count > with multi-functional partitioning in these type "commodity" > parts to open this discussion. Charles Johnsen at MISC has been working on such a design for quite some time (JAX's article in Embedded Systems Programming tells more). Phil Koopman koopman@greyhound.ece.cmu.edu Arpanet 2525A Wexford Run Rd. Wexford, PA 15090 *** this space for rent ***