The Jazz computer architecture is a motherboard and chipset design originally developed by Microsoft for use in developing Windows NT. The design was eventually used as the basis for most MIPS-based Windows NT systems.
In part because Microsoft intended NT to be portable between various microprocessor architectures, the MIPSRISC architecture was chosen for one of the first development platforms for the NT project in the late 1980s/early 1990s. However, around 1990, the existing MIPS-based systems (such as the TURBOchannel-equipped DECstation or the SGI Indigo) varied drastically from standard Intelpersonal computers such as the IBM AT—for example, neither used the ISA bus so common in Intel 386-class machines.
For those and other reasons, Microsoft decided to design their own MIPS-based hardware platform on which to develop NT, which resulted in the Jazz architecture. Later, Microsoft sold this architecture design to the MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. where it became the MIPS Magnum.
This design was simple enough and powerful enough that a majority of Windows NT-capable MIPS systems were based on modified versions of the Jazz architecture. A list of systems which more or less were based on Jazz includes:
The Jazz systems were designed to partially comply with the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) standard, and each used the ARC firmware to boot Windows NT. Other operating systems were also ported to various Jazz implementations, such as RISC/os to the MIPS Magnum.
There were also some MIPS systems designed to run Windows NT and comply with the ARC standard, but nevertheless were not based on the Jazz platform:
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The DECstation was a brand of computers used by DEC, and refers to three distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in 1978 as a word processing system, and the latter two both released in 1989. These comprised a range of computer workstations based on the MIPS architecture and a range of PC compatibles. The MIPS-based workstations ran ULTRIX, a DEC-proprietary version of UNIX, and early releases of OSF/1.
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Since 1985, many processors implementing some version of the MIPS architecture have been designed and used widely.
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