Underlining how difficult it will be for the traditionally leaden-footed IBM to keep its next generation Unix RISC machines up with the competition even if it gets the initial price-performance point right, MIPS Computer Systems Inc yesterday came out with its first machine built around the 64-bit ECL implementation of its RISC architecture – for delivery in the first quarter of next year – and claimed 55 MIPS and 13.3 MFLOPS performance out of the single processor machine. It will clearly within months have multi-processor models in its product line, and the initial $150,000 for the new RC6280 machine no doubt reflects the high cost of initial copies of the new chip, implying that the price-performance will have improved sharply by the end of next year. Control Data Corp is to buy the new machine OEM and market it against the DEC VAX 9000 under its own name. The Minneapolis mainframer expects to have taken machines with a sales value of over $100m by the end of 1991. And according to Electronic News, the new Stardent Computer Inc, Newton, Massachusetts will standardise on MIPS CPUs for future graphics workstations.
