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- Path: sparky!uunet!caen!sdd.hp.com!mips!mash
- From: mash@mips.com (John Mashey)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
- Subject: Re: Laptop Indigo
- Date: 13 Aug 1992 16:46:41 GMT
- Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
- Lines: 32
- Message-ID: <l8l4fhINNj90@spim.mips.com>
- References: <13841@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <1992Aug4.213604.27545@aber.ac.uk> <BsHGCr.CEJ@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: winchester.mips.com
-
- In article <BsHGCr.CEJ@news.cso.uiuc.edu> ercolessi@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu (furio ercolessi) writes:
- >In article <1992Aug4.213604.27545@aber.ac.uk>, bbg@aber.ac.uk (Bo Gervang) writes:
- >|>In article <13841@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> rdargahi@trane.iaims.bcm.tmc.edu (Ross Dargahi) writes:
- >|>>How about a laptop Indigo?
- >|>
- >|>BIG support from me. It should be based on the R4000. But is the
- >|>screen technology good enough for sgi's nice graphics?
- >
- >And, would its temperature remain low enough to prevent
- >the color of the case from changing from indigo to red to white during
- >operation ? :-)
-
- I don't know if there are any plans to build such a thing, and couldn't
- say if I did know. However, there is an R4000-variant chip (first publicly
- mentioned last April) designed for low-power use in laptops that is
- being worked on for next year.
- It is not well-known, but you can play RISC 2 ways:
- a) Make it really fast ... and use whatever power you use.
- (This is the way most people are familiar with).
- b) Make it fast ... but pay a lot of attenion to die space,
- power-oriented design, and get something a lot faster and cheaper
- to build than typical CISC chips.
-
- Hence, at least from the CPU chip side, this kind of thing will get
- feasible pretty soon. Of course, one would not expect a laptop chip
- to be as fast as an R4000 ... but should be noticably faster than
- R3000s.
- --
- -john mashey DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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