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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: AK2004 who wrote (628)7/8/1996 12:45:00 PM
From: Carl R.   of 1585879
 
The Nexgen 586 used a totally different architecture than the Pentium
including a different interface with cache/memory. It was instruction
compatible with x86, but was very different internally. Thus it
chould never be modified to be pin-compatible with the Pentium, and
it could never use existing motherboards/chipsets. It is gone
forever, though you can still buy some for really cheap prices from
liquidators. $150-250 should get you a Nexgen 586 motherboard with
cpu. The K5 is the only existing Pentium-level chip made by AMD, and
will continue to be the only one.

As for your 686 question, my answer would be that when AMD bought
Nexgen, and they switched to using AMD process technology instead of
IBM process technology, I am sure that some time was lost. However
that transition should have already taken place, and should be taken
into account. That said, I have no knowledge of whether the Nexgen
686 (alias the AMD K6) willl be out on time (i.e. Q1 1997) or not, or
whether it will meet performance targets. I will say that I sold my
AMD awhile ago because I came to believe that the K5 would never be a
factor in the market, and because I had my doubts that the K6 would
be released on time. Also in view of the problems that Cyrix has had
selling their 6x86, I have come to wonder whether or not the market
will ever again accept a chip that doesn't carry names like "Pentium"
or "Intel". When chips had numbers instead of names I think it was
easy for an OEM to slip in an AMD 486 instead of an Intel one, and
consumers never knew any different. Now maybe the consumer comes in
asking for a "Pentium".

Carl
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