[geeks] New SGI workstation

Eric Dittman dittman at dittman.net
Thu Jul 10 11:50:05 CDT 2003


> > NSK is migrating from MIPS to Itanium.  That would leave SGI as the only
> > company using MIPS CPUs for their servers and workstations.  It may be that
> > continuing development of the high-end of the MIPS processor line may be
> > cost prohibitive with only SGI using them.
> 
> What's this NSK?  The company that Google comes up with isn't a computer
> company.  The first one is a bearing and other doodad manufactor, and
> the other is a software company in Russia.

I guess I was a little too abbreviated.  NSK is the OS on the HP (formerly
Compaq, formerly Tandem) NonStop servers.

> > Another large (the largest, I think) consumer of MIPS CPUs is also migrating
> > to a different architecture:  Sony.  The Playstation 3 is supposed to use a
> > custom CPU.
> 
> Sony already uses custom CPUs.  They just licensed the MIPS core to use
> in their custom CPUs.  As it is, in the PS2, most of the hard work is
> done by the custom parts, not the MIPS part. 

Don't they get a small licensing fee for each CPU?
-- 
Eric Dittman
dittman at dittman.net



More information about the geeks mailing list