Top Microsoft boffin votes for Russian Merced Killer

The Elbrus E2K processor, dubbed the Merced Killer, has received unexpected endorsement from a senior Microsoft executive. Gordon Bell, who heads the Microsoft research unit, and developed DEC PDP and Vax, presented a table at this year's International Symposium on High Performance Computing which shows Merced in a poor light compared to the Russian chip. The slide Bell showed gave the E2K's clock frequency as 1.2GHz, compared to Merced's .8GHz, SPECint85/SPECfp95 as 135/350 compared to 45/70, Due size as 126 sq mm compared to Merced's 300 sq mm, power dissipation as 35 watts compared to 60 watts. For the E2K, bus bandwidth as 15Gbyte/sec, cache sizes as 64/256K, GFLOPS as 10.2 and system ship in Q4 2001. Bell's slide showed these last four categories as non appplicable to the Merced microprocessor. By the way, has Merced taped out yet, anyone? ® See also Battle royal breaks out over Russian chip claim Intel uses Russian military technologies Russian Merced Killer to achieve 600MHz Russian chip makers get to .35 micron Moscow government to support Merced Killer