John Mashey, a computer designer who has filled a role similar to Mr. Crawford's at neighboring MIPS Computer, a leading maker of RISC chips, has followed Intel closely, paying particular attention to the Pentium.

Indeed, Motorola abandoned an earlier plan to manufacture RISC chips designed by MIPS Computer when Data General's founder and then-president Edson D. de Castro, objected on the grounds that it would weaken support for the 88000.

Silicon Graphics reduced the price of its planned acquisition of MIPS Computer to reflect MIPS's poor first-quarter results.

Sun Microsystems designed a chip based on Berkeley's model and MIPS Computer, the Stanford one.

MIPS Computer, based in Sunnyvale, Calif, returned to profitability in the fourth quarter after major changes the previous quarter.

"Its flexibility confers tremendous versatility to RISC," said John Moussouris, co-founder of MIPS Computer.

I.B.M.'s highest rating was 34, the company said; the highest rating among all other competitors was 17.6, shared by MIPS Computer, Sun Microsystems and Motorola.

"We don't accept the notion of special purpose machines for certain applications," said Skip Stritter, vice president of development programs at MIPS Computer.

The company has announced that it is licensing a computer design from MIPS Computer and shifting to an open systems approach based on the Unix operating system.