mash@mips.UUCP (John Mashey) (04/19/85)
WHAT IS MIPS COMPUTER SYSTEMS?
MIPS is fast-growing startup (==40 people) located in Mountain View, CA.
It is building high-performance, but still low-cost, physically small
boards that use proprietary, full-custom VLSI RISC chips. We think that
our work represents the next big cost/performance jump in computers.
We're not just chip people, but blend expertise in 4 areas:
VLSI CMOS Chip Design [followon to Stanford MIPS work]
Optimizing Compilers [starting point = Stanford U-Code]
Board/System/Workstation Design
UNIX [V.2.2, 4.2BSD, several multi-processor implementations]
We make interesting tradeoffs among these areas to get high performance.
What's high performance? For starters, figure 5 MIPS, with a design carefully
tuned for chip shrinks and speedup in the future. If you can imagine a
a desktop VAX 8600 you have the right idea for first product. We'll sell these
to large OEM customers [that I can't name]. First round of funding was
Mayfield; second round is closing soon [first class V.C.'s; despite the current
market, we haven't had much trouble.]
WHO ARE WE?
A bunch of real experienced people, with track records of building real
products and making them work. Founders were John Hennessy (Stanford),
John Moussouris (VLSIer from IBM), Skip Stritter (68000 architect).
A SMALL sample of others: Vaemond Crane (CEO - ex-pres. of Computer Consoles,
ex-Intel, ex-Sperry); Les Crudele (Dir. New Ventures at Apollo, 68010/68020
architect/mgr); Todd Basche (architect/proj-mgr of Apollo DN660 & others);
Larry Weber (mgr perf. and applications at Dialogic; IBM Pascal/VS; IBM 801).
We're well staffed with optimizing compiler people and chip wizards.
Besides technical expertise, we've got experienced key people who know
finance, marketing, manufacturing, and business in general.
Our style is to build "over-qualified" organization in order to grow properly;
many of us dropped 1-2 levels of management to get in on this.
We are a multidisciplinary, non-prima-donna crew who likes to get the job done.
[And why am I here? If you remember "Small is Beautiful" or "Software Army"
talks, you know I'd find irresistable the idea of RISC ( = S.I.B. in hardware!)
systems built by small, fast-moving teams.]
WHY SHOULD YOU BE INTERESTED?
The work is exciting. Startup equity is still available. Benefits are good.
People are outstanding. If you like startups, or are just getting ready to
try one, you may have noticed good ones are harder to find these days.
WHAT JOBS ARE AVAILABLE?
UNIX Wizards - I need several more kernel folks - we'll be doing several
ports for starters, plus a lot of networking, graphics, and performance
work, now and later. Need to be experienced (3-5 years in industry, + solid
computer science background; have done a port or two already; have been
through the wars of getting real product out); ready to work hard; reasonable
to work with; be good software engineer in making reasoned design decisions.
Useful side-specialties are networking, graphics, multi-processors,
and data communications. Later on I'll be able to take some sharp, but
not quite as experienced people. Not yet, sorry.
QA/Test/Release Control - I need a lead person here soon to start getting
this together and then build the group (1 more by Fall, half a dozen by
4Q86). Ideal person would have about 5 years of industrial experience
after a computer science background, have spent several years in development,
have spent at least 2 building/managing such a group, and still be
a handson person who knows how to automate this business. Ideal person
will have run such an effort for a UNIX port before.
Diagnostics - Person should have 3+ years' experience with instruction
verification diagnostics, overall system diagnostics.
Hardware Engineers - should be aggressive designers, 2-10 years' experience,
TTL, high-performance systems (supermini or above).
Send resume or call.Contact Todd Basche for diagnostics&hardware, me for rest.
-john mashey
UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!glacier!mips!mash
ARPA: mips!mash@SU-Glacier.ARPA
DDD: 415-960-1200
USPS: MIPS Computer Systems, 1330 Charleston Rd, Mtn View, CA 94043