With the half-a-dozen R4000 fabs making aggressive noises about the R4000 – $300 by the end of the year, $100 by mid-1993 – MIPS Computer Systems Inc is set to spur the trend with a new iteration of the R4000 it is readying. The R4000LC/LP is a low-cost, low-power version, which has also been shrunk in size, to make it attractive to the embedded and laptop market. Operating at 1W, but with the same performance as the standard R4000 part, the chip part will see the light of day late next year, according to chief executive Bob Miller, and is to cost substantially less than than $100.
