Mips chip flip flops as Tandem team chooses Alpha

The Compaq-Tandem-Digital triumvirate said officially today that its Himalaya servers will stop using Mips chips in 2001. Earlier this year, The Register exclusively reported that the Mips chip was on the chopping block, the day Eckhard Pfeiffer flew to London and two days after he bought Digital. David Russell, Compaq’s Himalayan spokesman, said: "We’ll continue with two new iterations of Mips chips. There are two candidates being looked at, Alpha and Merced. We’ll consider performance, price/performance and time to market." Russell would not be drawn on whether the Alpha was the preferred candidate, despite the comments of his colleagues Richard George and Hugh Jenkins. (See separate story).