30 ms·

Probably nowhere. :-( MIPS was, almost twenty years ago, perhaps the first architecture that had 64-bit capable chips you could power with two AAA batteries (al

by puzzle 8y ago

Probably nowhere. :-( MIPS was, almost twenty years ago, perhaps the first architecture that had 64-bit capable chips you could power with two AAA batteries (along with RAM, a screen and the rest of the system). Talk about squandered opportunities! For some reason, it was all downhill after the PS2/PSP.

zwieback 8y ago
That reason is ARM, they just crushed everyone with their business model even though they weren't best at anything.
- ethn 8y ago
  What was unique about their business model? Licensing their hardware/software?
  - zwieback 8y ago
    I don't think it was unique, just that MIPS, PowerPC and the other players at the time were linked to large companies that were not as good at working with everyone and anyone who wanted to use their cores.
    - baybal2 8y ago
      >I don't think it was unique, just that MIPS, PowerPC and the other players at the time were linked to large companies that were not as good at working with everyone and anyone who wanted to use their cores. The no. 1 reason ARM went ahead
- puzzle 8y ago
  When I said "for some reason", I was trying not to go into speculation. But yeah, ARM definitely attacked them in the embedded market from the lower end. And Motorola, transitioning from 68k to PPC, from the high end (PPC was very popular for laser printers, for example), later joined by IBM (Cell/Xenon). We all know what happened to SGI in the server/workstation market.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    SGI also have themselves to blame when they decided to be just yet another hardware vendor selling Linux/Windows systems.
    - bogomipz 8y ago
      I'm not understanding your comment. Weren't they always just that - a hardware vendor? I think they had some image editing stuff that only ran on their boxes but didn't they still essentially make their money on the high end hardware needed to run those programs?
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        All commercial UNIX vendors were hardware vendors. What made them special is how they combined their hardware with their own version version of UNIX. Hence why even trying to write portable code across UNIXEs wasn't as easy as many believe. Irix had IrisGL, Iris Inventor, XFS and a few other goodies, before they became the Open variants. SGI was also a big sponsor of the C++ STL work.
        trasz 8y ago
        Twenty different vendors combined their hardware with their own version of Unix. There was nothing special about that.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Sure there was, the vertical integration and overall user experience.
        walterbell 8y ago
        With the end of Moore's Law, are we returning to vertically integrated hardware+software? Domain Specific Architecture talk by Hennessy & Patterson, 2018 talk for 2017 Turing Award: http://iscaconf.org/isca2018/docs/HennessyPattersonTuringLectureISCA4June2018.pdf http://iscaconf.org/isca2018/docs/HennessyPattersonTuringLec...
- baybal2 8y ago
  >That reason is ARM, they just crushed everyone with their business model even though they weren't best at anything. Not business model per-se, but not being crippled by pointy hair boss types from C-levels to lowest level managers. Second to that what got them ahead was their lack of greed and ambition. Few people who had firsthand experience with buying IC IP licenses I know tell of MIPS 10 years ago as "we will not simply sell you a core, but force feed you all peripherals, and make you pay for 20 more licenses for god know what along the way." Compare it to ARM where you wire money today and get a guy coming to your office to drop off harddrives with netlists a week after. For support, documentation, software, and everything else ARM was light years ahead.
monocasa 8y ago
Which system are you talking about? The PSP was 32 bit IIRC.
- puzzle 8y ago
  The Linux Agenda VR3 ran on two AAA batteries and used a 66MHz NEC VR4181. That's a 32/64bit MIPSIII chip. The VR3 only used it in 32bit mode, but you could take over the system and enable 64bit mode. It was little-endian only, unfortunately.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Neat!
bogomipz 8y ago
>"MIPS was, almost twenty years ago, perhaps the first architecture that had 64-bit capable chips you could power with two AAA batteries" Is this a specific reference? What device would that be?
- puzzle 8y ago
  Yes, I mention it above. It's an Agenda VR3, a Linux PDA from 2001. I still have one of those. The CPU is from 2000.
spilk 8y ago
Crazy to think about the range of devices the architecture supported, from small battery-powered things to giant multi-rack SGI Onyx machines. I'm still impressed with my dual-R12000 Octane today.

by puzzle 8y ago

zwieback 8y ago

That reason is ARM, they just crushed everyone with their business model even though they weren't best at anything.

ethn 8y ago
What was unique about their business model? Licensing their hardware/software?
- zwieback 8y ago
  I don't think it was unique, just that MIPS, PowerPC and the other players at the time were linked to large companies that were not as good at working with everyone and anyone who wanted to use their cores.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    >I don't think it was unique, just that MIPS, PowerPC and the other players at the time were linked to large companies that were not as good at working with everyone and anyone who wanted to use their cores. The no. 1 reason ARM went ahead
puzzle 8y ago
When I said "for some reason", I was trying not to go into speculation. But yeah, ARM definitely attacked them in the embedded market from the lower end. And Motorola, transitioning from 68k to PPC, from the high end (PPC was very popular for laser printers, for example), later joined by IBM (Cell/Xenon). We all know what happened to SGI in the server/workstation market.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  SGI also have themselves to blame when they decided to be just yet another hardware vendor selling Linux/Windows systems.
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    I'm not understanding your comment. Weren't they always just that - a hardware vendor? I think they had some image editing stuff that only ran on their boxes but didn't they still essentially make their money on the high end hardware needed to run those programs?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      All commercial UNIX vendors were hardware vendors. What made them special is how they combined their hardware with their own version version of UNIX. Hence why even trying to write portable code across UNIXEs wasn't as easy as many believe. Irix had IrisGL, Iris Inventor, XFS and a few other goodies, before they became the Open variants. SGI was also a big sponsor of the C++ STL work.
      - trasz 8y ago
        Twenty different vendors combined their hardware with their own version of Unix. There was nothing special about that.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Sure there was, the vertical integration and overall user experience.
        walterbell 8y ago
        With the end of Moore's Law, are we returning to vertically integrated hardware+software? Domain Specific Architecture talk by Hennessy & Patterson, 2018 talk for 2017 Turing Award: http://iscaconf.org/isca2018/docs/HennessyPattersonTuringLectureISCA4June2018.pdf http://iscaconf.org/isca2018/docs/HennessyPattersonTuringLec...
baybal2 8y ago
>That reason is ARM, they just crushed everyone with their business model even though they weren't best at anything. Not business model per-se, but not being crippled by pointy hair boss types from C-levels to lowest level managers. Second to that what got them ahead was their lack of greed and ambition. Few people who had firsthand experience with buying IC IP licenses I know tell of MIPS 10 years ago as "we will not simply sell you a core, but force feed you all peripherals, and make you pay for 20 more licenses for god know what along the way." Compare it to ARM where you wire money today and get a guy coming to your office to drop off harddrives with netlists a week after. For support, documentation, software, and everything else ARM was light years ahead.

monocasa 8y ago

Which system are you talking about? The PSP was 32 bit IIRC.

puzzle 8y ago
The Linux Agenda VR3 ran on two AAA batteries and used a 66MHz NEC VR4181. That's a 32/64bit MIPSIII chip. The VR3 only used it in 32bit mode, but you could take over the system and enable 64bit mode. It was little-endian only, unfortunately.
- monocasa 8y ago
  Neat!

bogomipz 8y ago

>"MIPS was, almost twenty years ago, perhaps the first architecture that had 64-bit capable chips you could power with two AAA batteries" Is this a specific reference? What device would that be?

puzzle 8y ago
Yes, I mention it above. It's an Agenda VR3, a Linux PDA from 2001. I still have one of those. The CPU is from 2000.

spilk 8y ago

Crazy to think about the range of devices the architecture supported, from small battery-powered things to giant multi-rack SGI Onyx machines. I'm still impressed with my dual-R12000 Octane today.