Prior to the merger, Nexgen was making a 586 chips (at IBM), and had
a 686 chip under development. AMD had both a K5 and a K6 under
development. The K5 project was in trouble, so AMD moved some of the
engineers from the K6 to the K5 in order to try to get it out. This
was going to delay the K6, so AMD bought Nexgen. The Nexgen 586 had
several design features that made it better than the Pentium, but had
the very serious problem that it required a special motherboard, as
it was totally incompatable with the Pentium. This limited sales (and
profitability) of Nexgen. Also, since the chip was developed using
IBM software libraries, it could not be made at the AMD fab without
being laid out all over again. Thus AMD had a chip in the Nexgen 586
that wasn't selling well, and that they had to pay IBM to fabricate,
so they elected to discontinue it, thinking that the K5 would pick
up the slack. But even with the K6 engineers, there were more delays
and finally AMD went ahead and released an un-optimized version so
that they would have something to sell. Since the K6 project was
delayed by stealing engineers for the K5, AMD is now using the Nexgen
686 design as their 6th generation hope. The AMD engineers from the
K6 design team are now working either on the K5, the Nexgen 686 (alias
the AMD K6), or on an even further out design, the K7.
In summary, AMD is using the K5 as their Pentium level chip, and has
dis-continued the Nexgen 586. They are using the Nexgen 686 as their
PPro level chip, and have dis-continued the K6, but have confused
everyone by renaming the Nexgen 686 as the AMD K6. They also have a
K7 under development.
At least, this is my understanding of what has happened/is happening.
Hope that this clears things up for you, or if I have a mis-
understanding, someone clears it up for me.
Carl |
