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From: lindsay@gandalf.cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: 386 Clones
Message-ID: <10833@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 23 Oct 90 16:50:19 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 18


I've heard some comments lately about how hard it will be for 386
clone makers to get a debugged product to market.  An example is Nick
Tredennick's article in Microprocessor Report, which implies that
some of the clone makers haven't any clues to rub together.

But, wait a second here. There are three things they have to get
right: pinout-related issues: the 286 emulation: the native mode.
(They don't have to get the cycle counts "right", do they?)

I would have nominated the 286 emulation as the killer, since the
native mode is mostly "more of the same" with paging.  But, AMD is
mass-producing a perfectly good 286, and the 386's microcode can be
reverse-engineered.  So, what is to stop AMD (at least) from getting
its 386 debugged and out?  Is the pessimism only justified for the
smaller houses, or have I mis-estimated where the problems lie?
-- 
Don		D.C.Lindsay