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In article <32459@usc> ajayshah@alhena.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
>In article <1991Apr30.191117.4373@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> umh@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
>>In article <1991Apr29.164102.11221@kithrup.COM>,
>>sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: 

>>> Meanwhile, an R4000 machine, based on everything I've seen and heard, should
>>> run for about $10k or so (monochrome, I'm sure) and should be quite speedy.

>>A MIPS rep today told me to expect ACE machines (the compaq/microsoft etc
>>group) at $2K to $5K in Q2 92.

Of course, the cheap-ass ACE machines, assuming they really do materialize,
will be based on R3000A.

>Will ACE machines run binaries for today's MIPS machines (or is
>that a meaningless statement because of DEC byte ordering?)  

The ACE committee at present consists of Compaq, DEC, and MIPS on the hardware
side, MicroSoft and SCO on the software side.  MIPS wants to sell chips.  All
the other folks have a vested interest in maintaining as much PC compatibility
as possible -- both MicroSoft and SCO apparently want their respective OSs,
OS/2 3.0 and SCO UNIX, to be extremely source-level compatible between these
"ARC" systems and PClones.  PC Clones are little endian.  So is DEC MIPS.  SCO
is little endian flavored OSF, while AT&T is going big endian for their MIPS
UNIX port (used on the Sony machines and some others).  I don't see anyone 
here representing big endian interests.

>Or will they try to invent an application base from scratch?  If so,
>will they have binary compatibility between machines which boot 
>a MS-DOS and those which boot Unix?  Where does the support
>announced for Intel processors come in?  

I think they just mean software parity.  If you recompile code written for an
ACE system, it should run unmodified on a corresponding PClone under the same
OS.  I guess between OSs, you could always stick to standard function call
interface sets, but I really doubt they're going for any cross-OS ABI here.

>I really hope these guys get something going: much as I like
>using Sun computers, there should be some real competition else
>Sun will grow fat!

The interesting thing about this ACE effort is not so much the project itself,
which seems kind of wacky, but any effort to get a real open RISC architecture
system going.  Sun seems to have been trying to launch the same thing 
themselves with SPARC, but the fact that they're a single house generating
(at least originally) chip architecture, system software, and final product,
they could be a scary plan to sign up for.  One of the reasons the PClones
were so successful is that Software, Hardware, and Chips were for the most
part driven by three separate companies with common though not always purely
overlapping interests.  ACE seems to have the same basic setup.  

The worst part of the PClone world was that the fool things were so hardware
dependent, you couldn't innovate or cost reduce.  A good 90's open system
architecture should allow for all of this.  It should be possible to plug an
ACE (or whatever) card into an Amiga 3000 or a slotted Mac II and run ACE 
software as a friendly coprocessor rather than the emulation critter any PClone
coprocessor board must become in order to work at all.

>Ajay Shah, (213)734-3930, ajayshah@usc.edu

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
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