It appears 1995 will be the year when fifth-generation x86 microprocessors come into their own. Although volumes of 486-class chips are expected to remain strong, the proliferation of 586-class CPUs will give system makers and users many options, forcing system prices well below $2000 by the end of 1995.
Intel (Santa Clara, CA) will continue introducing new variations of the Pentium. This December, Intel is promising to release the P24T, the long-awaited Pentium OverDrive chip for systems with special upgrade sockets. To address the heat problems known to afflict this CPU in some systems, the P24T will run at 3.3 V and include a tiny fan and a piggybacked voltage transformer for compatibility with 5-V motherboards. Another Pentium variant, code-named P55C, is expected to shrink the die to a 0.4-micron process and perhaps add more cache. Intel will
also introduce a 75-MHz version of the P54C-series Pentium this fall.
Sometime in 1995, Intel plans to announce the P6, the first sixth-generation x86 processor. Virtually nothing has been publicly disclosed about this CPU, but it's expected to be a multichip module that modestly improves on the Pentium's superscalar core. There's also a rumor that the P6 uses some patented technology that will make it legally difficult for vendors of other x86 processors to use the same supporting chip sets. Appreciable volumes of the P6 probably won't reach the market until 1996.
NexGen (Milpitas, CA) recently saw Alaris (Fremont, CA) ship the first systems using its Nx586 processor. (For more information on that system and how well it performs, including the first benchmark report, see News & Views, page 30.) It will be interesting to see how well this newest entry fares in the chip wars. Although the Nx586 will be its first product, NexGen has been working on the design since 1986. (For more on the company's
history, see ``NexGen Nx586 Straddles the RISC/CISC Divide,'' June BYTE, page 76.) NexGen has some strong financial backers, and the Nx586 is being manufactured by IBM Microelectronics.
Cyrix (Richardson, TX) says it will deliver samples of its M1 processor this year and begin volume production in 1995. Like AMD and NexGen, Cyrix has designed a superscalar microarchitecture that is more flexible than the Pentium's and has enough potential to compete with all the new Pentium variations now appearing (see ``M1 Challenges Pentium,'' January BYTE). Also like its fellow x86 competitors, Cyrix has perennially lagged at least a year behind Intel, and its efforts to close that gap will depend on whether the P6 is a radical leap beyond the Pentium.
IBM Microelectronics is manufacturing the M1 and has also acquired the right to sell the chip under its own name. Such an endorsement from IBM could go a long way toward establishing the credibility of Cyrix in the high-end x86 market.
x86 Wars Update
