Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!amdcad!brahms!phil
From: phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 386 Clones
Message-ID: <1990Oct26.015112.476@amd.com>
Date: 26 Oct 90 01:51:12 GMT
References: <10833@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: usenet@amd.com (NNTP Posting)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc; Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 21

In article <10833@pt.cs.cmu.edu> lindsay@gandalf.cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) writes:
|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?

Here's some more data for your query. Intel stopped delivering usable
286 manufacturing packages with the C step August 1984. AMD came to
realize that they were on their own and started reverse engineering
the 286 in March 1986, culminating with the introduction of the 
286 S Step in Q3 1987. (the judge described Intel's deliveries
Q1 1986 as "deliberately incomplete, deliberately indecipherable
and delliberately unusable".)

So you might believe that AMD does possess a great deal of 286
experience and expertise.

--
This article contains my opinions and does not represent the views
of the company.