<font color=red>...For example, Intel's move toward names such as the Pentium, which can be trade-marked, and away from the unprotected numbered product names such as 486 is designed to stop rivals from calling their products by Intel's names. But NexGen's NX586-P100 and Cyrix's 5X86 processors demonstrate that Intel cannot solve this problem. Intel also tries to dissuade encroachment on its market by setting standards such as the Icomp rating scheme. Intel's competitors may have questionable marketing practices, but they do provide good products at lower prices.
The 5X86, unlike its given-to-exaggeration name, can stand among low-end Pentiums and other "586" chips in performance. It raises some knotty issues, however, about what constitutes a 586, and even more issues about how you measure speed.
This issue is not unlike one that rankled the minicomputer industry more than a decade ago. The VAX 11/780 was the gold standard, the working definition of mips. Everything else was compared to VAX mips. But cheap mips, RISC mips, and fat mips all devalued the original measure to the point where DEC got off the train and started measuring its processors in VUPs, or VAX Units of Processing. Intel has attempted to do the same thing over the past three years, introducing the Icomp rating scheme for determining a processor's power independent of its clock speed, just as a car's top speed and quarter-mile time are not predicted by its horsepower alone.
Users, however, continue to buy by megahertz. But even this seemingly precise number can be deceptive. An NX586-P100, for instance, is not a 100MHz processor, but runs at 93MHz. NexGen says it's equivalent to a 100MHz Pentium, which it is, until you factor in floating point. The NexGen chip doesn't have floating point, while the Pentium does.
There will always be a temptation to play fast and loose with nomenclature in the computer industry, where confusion can be the ally of the unscrupulous...
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P4 is unscrupulous as it's the first CPU to be slower in Performance then previous generation yet higher in Mhz.
M. |
