[geeks] New SGI workstation

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 08:57:17AM +0200, Bjorn Ramqvist wrote:
>
>
> > Anyway, that doesn't count for the development costs for higher-end
> > numbercrunchers like the (now) R16k or R18k lines. If (when?) NSK moves
> > away from MIPS, SGI will be just like Sun is now and how DEC was before
> > - developing new (own) processors and let someone else manufacture them.
>
> I think the fear is that SGI will also stop developing the CPUs.
>
> Also, isn't MIPS fairly independent anyway?
>

There are 2 MIPS really, part of the high end processor group still
operates inside SGI, these are the guys producing the R14/16/18Ks. The
guys that produce all the cores, embedded stuff are the "other" MIPS they
were spun off a while back.

SGI did a big goof up with the MIPS group, they fired most of their good
engineers when they decided to go Intel all the way. this was during the
good tech days. Then they realized Itanium was still off by a few years,
so they had to re-hire a lot of people to keep MIPS going. Of course many
never returned back, and the ones that were lured back were at a huge
costs, since they already had tons of job offers elsewhere. Great manager
that Belluzo guy...