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January 1997
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Bits
/ Goodbye NT for MIPS
The original RISC platform for hosting Windows NT, the MIPS architecture, is getting phased out as a host for Microsoft's enterprise operating system. Microsoft has announced it will cease future NT development efforts for the MIPS platform due to decreasing demand. On NT, the MIPS architecture got caught between Digital's Alpha processor at the hi
gh end and the Pentium on the low end; when software developers had only enough resources to support two hardware platforms for NT, the MIPS platform often got squeezed out.
NEC, the manufacturer that sold the most MIPS/NT workstations, says it will no longer build NT machines based on the MIPS platform. However, NEC will continue to make MIPS-architecture chips for Nintendo 64 systems, Silicon Graphics workstations, and the new Windows CE platform.
Although Microsoft
says it will continue to support NT 4.0 on MIPS, the company advises customers to evaluate other hardware platforms for future versions of NT. Those hardware choices are PowerPC, Alpha, and x86.
Matthew Wilson more...
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Goodbye NT for MIPS
