Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 386 Clones
Message-ID: <2790@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 25 Oct 90 15:33:34 GMT
References: <10833@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <35204@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 21

In article <35204@cup.portal.com> mslater@cup.portal.com (Michael Z Slater) writes:

|   1. They have the rights to the 286
|   2. They have an undisputed right to Intel's patents
|   3. They may have the right (now under dispute) to Intel's microcode
|   4. Jerry Sanders is really mad!
| 
| AMD is sampling parts that are rumored to be in much better shape than Nick's
| piece would imply.  These parts use Intel's microcode, and don't have to work
| around Intel's patents.  The mask design is original, but probably follow's
| Intel's logic design very closely.

  I wonder if JS is mad enough to contemplate making a 486-like chip
which fits in a 386 socket. I wonder what that would do to Intel's
market? Obviously it would have to look like a 386 from bus signal
level, but the cycles/opcode could be lower, there could be an FPU,
about the only really serious performance hit you take is the loss of
burst mode memory access.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
    VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix.