And if you've ever looked inside of your typical Cisco router, it's a little old MIPS chip from the 1900s.

He notes that for similar performance, the Pentium processor has 3.1 million transistors, compared with only 1.3 million for a comparably fast MIPS chip.

Simply by the support it has attracted, the MIPS chip is likely to be a survivor.

Prime Computer and Groupe Bull of France recently stopped making computers based on MIPS chips.

Tandem declined to say whether the new operating system will come out on current or future Tandem Integrity machines, all based on MIPS chips.

That includes the beleaguered MIPS chip, which failed to increase its 9% market share between 1990 and 1991.

"But later this year we'll see a much lower-cost MIPS chip targeted at 486-price computers and with comparable performance to the Pentium."

Mr. Slater said that the MIPS 64-bit chip sold for less than $1,000 each on orders of more than 1,000.

Nintendo, with the MIPS chip from Silicon Graphics, says it has the more powerful processor.

He noted that the Sony Corporation had also discussed using the MIPS chip in consumer products.