Word: risc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some executives contend that innovation is alive and well, citing such advances as notebook-size computers and high-speed RISC microprocessors. Says T.J. Rodgers, chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor: "What the bean counters who make projections forget is that in the next two to three years, we will have the next set of innovations, which will make them abandon their projections. It has happened before, and it will happen again." Don Valentine, a partner in Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm, contends that creative stagnation is confined mostly to the big corporations, including IBM, Wang and Unisys. Says he: "There...
Moreover, the newest workstations contain microprocessor chips endowed with an advanced technology called RISC (reduced instruction-set computer). Because the instructions embedded in the circuitry of the streamlined chips are simpler and relatively few in number, they take less time to execute. The computers that have RISC chips are faster and more powerful than standard models. One result is that a workstation can produce graphics that are far more detailed than those generated by personal computers...
Major players in the RISC-chip business include Sun Microsystems, MIPS, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola. Last week Intel, the world's largest microprocessor manufacturer, put its seal of approval on the workstation revolution by introducing a million-transistor chip that incorporates RISC technology...
...first, the industry was reluctant to switch to RISC. But the new crop of chips has made believers out of almost everybody. Sun, a company best known for its engineering computers, got into the chip business last summer when it began licensing a RISC processor to AT&T, Unisys and Xerox. MIPS, which introduced its second generation of the chips last month, supplies microprocessors to Tandem, Prime, and Silicon Graphics. Hewlett-Packard has built an entire line of computers around RISC technology...
Most important, IBM is making a major commitment to RISC. IBM Vice President Andrew Heller suggests that RISC technology could produce startling advances in electronic speech recognition, machine vision and artificial intelligence -- all of which require superfast microprocessors. Says Heller: "Computers that can listen and talk back, and recognize objects on sight, are not so farfetched. RISC will help make all that a reality, and it's going to happen this century...