rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) (06/16/88)
I've posted on this subject before, and have reduced my requirements based on the following back of the envelope calculations: 1988 State of Art RISC does ~24000 Dhrystones @ ~17 Mhz We are looking to clock the part around 4 Mhz for EMI and power reasons, so I scale 24000 by 4/17 and get 5600 Dhrystones. But this is on a 32 bit bus, and we'd like to stay with at most a 16 bit bus. So I divide again by a factor of two and get 2800 Dhrystones for a hypothetical 4 Mhz, 16 bit bus RISC machine. This is considerably less than my requested 4K Dhrystones. In contrast, an 8088 at this clock rate does around 250 Dhrystones, and an 8086 at this speed does about 400! Granted, I may have overlooked something in scaling down the RISC performance, but these numbers, even if wrong by a factor of two, still intrigue me. We are currently looking at our third generation of products. The first two generations have taken the lowly 80C88 to its performance limits. Based upon current volumes, these new products have projected volumes of 6-7 figures. There's not a software person on our team that would like to continue down the 80x6 family tree, and not much reason to, since most of the software is in C. But unless I can find a significantly better alternative, the inertia points in Intel's direction. Time is short here. Chip cost is important ($10). This is a product family design, so any design win is likely to create the same inertia that the Intel parts have in our first two generations. One final constraint: unless the vendor is a well established major chip manufacturer, there's not a chance in hell that a single sourced part will get the nod. Even a major chip vendor will have trouble selling us on a single sourced part. If your part is on the drawing table and can't be publicly announced, call me on (201) 834-1378. If you can't get me there, leave a message on (201) 389-8963. We're still planning, so we can entertain promises. We are able and willing to sign non-disclosure agreements. We have someone who can speak and translate Marketroid. Swallow your PRIDE. Sign the death warrant on the 808x. Cripple your RISC today! -- Rick Richardson, President, PC Research, Inc. (201) 542-3734 (voice, nights) OR (201) 834-1378 (voice, days) uunet!pcrat!rick (UUCP) rick%pcrat.uucp@uunet.uu.net (INTERNET)