gillham@edmund.cs.andrews.edu (Andrew Gillham) (06/12/91)
Headline: Next Develops 88110 Workstation Triples Speed Without Affecting Price By Kristi Coale And Tom Quinlan Next Inc. has developed a RISC-based prototype NextStation that triples the performance of the black cube without raising the current price tag. According to sources, the Motorola 88110-based unit will perform 50 to 60 million instructions per second (MIPS) and can replace the company's current line of 68030- and 68040-based systems. The unit may ship late this year or in early 1992, they added. The 88110 has integrated graphics, Paged Memory Management Unit (PMMU) and floating-point coprocessing task. It can also handle some digital signal processing (DSP) directly. Those integrated features will allow Next to save on the cost of additional chips, sources said. With 12 megabytes of RAM, a 100-megabyte hard disk drive, and a 16-inch color monitor, the RISC NextStation could sell for approx- imately what the current 68040 design does, sources said. The 88110 being evaluated by Next runs at 40 MHz and turns in 50 to 60 MIPS, sources said. The 88110 also features a superscalar design, which allows it to perform more than one instruction per clock cycle. When combined with Motorola's 96002 compression chip -- which Motorola is reportedly offering Next at a reduced price -- the motherboard of the RISC unit can support all the functions now assigned to the Next Dimension board. If the product is brought to market, Next would drop the Next Dimension board entirely, along with Intel Corp.s i860 and C-Cube Microsystems's compression chip, sources said. The move to RISC for Next could be a precarious one, however. In its brief history, the company has already had difficulty wooin developers to its platform. The move to RISC would require that software be completely recompiled, developers and sources said. When the 68040-based NextStation was announced last year, Next founder Steve Jobs said he wanted to stay with a CISC design to minimize software issues. According to sources familiar with the 88110 prototype however, the price/performance of RISC might be to good to pass up. "Besides, this is the best time to make this transition. Right now there aren't that many Next users. It's going to be harder to do later." one source noted. Apple Computer, Inc. is also considering the processor for its RISC platform. (See "Apple Plans RISC-Based System for 1992 Release," May 27, Page 1.) Motorola is expected to officially announce the 88110 later this year. END OF ARTICLE. There is also a "The Race to RISC" table on this page. It shows that the Next would cost less than $10,000. I'm not sure how that relates to the "almost the same as the current NextStation" statements, but $5000 is less than $10000. ;-) NOTE: this is directly typed out of InfoWorld. They own the copyright, but I thought people would want to see this. I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, can't prove it was me.. ;-) ;-) -Andrew -- =========================================================================== Andrew Gillham Andrews University (gillham@andrews.edu)