Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!ulysses!andante!amdcad!diablo!phil
From: phil@diablo.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 80486
Message-ID: <23671@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 2 Dec 88 20:36:44 GMT
References: <15374@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <1300@inuxd.UUCP> <3472@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Sender: news@amdcad.AMD.COM
Reply-To: phil@diablo.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 22

In article <3472@ttidca.TTI.COM> hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:
|About a year ago I caught a rumor that both the 80486 and 80586 chips
|already exist and are being used in-house at Intel.  Supposedly, they were
|being kept off the market so as not to hurt 80386 sales.

I would like to point out that the 80586 is already out. It is Intel's
Ethernet interface chip. Sun used it on some of their Sun-3s and in a
talk at Usenix mentioned that the 586 driver was exceptionally large
because of the many chip bugs they had to work around. Sun uses AMD
7990 LANCE chips in their later model workstations (Sun-3/50 and
3/60).  Researchers at LBL have found they can get more Ethernet
throughput from the LANCE than the 586. 

(disclaimer: obviously I work for AMD but I believe these statements
are true facts. I am not an authorized representative of the company
and these are not official statements.)

By the way, the 786 also exists, it's a graphics chip.
--

Phil Ngai, phil@diablo.amd.com
{uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil