The acceptance of the high-speed Futurebus+ is said to be crimped by lack of chips, so it is good news that Philips Components-Signetics and Texas Instruments Inc have joined forces to implement the functions needed to support all the features and performance of the Futurebus+ standard, including support for packet mode and cache-coherent transactions. The two companies will source a broad range of transceivers, controllers and data path circuits to create a family of chips supporting the entire Futurebus+ cost-performance spectrum for applications ranging from workstations to supercomputers, and both will manufacture and market the entire family, as FB2000 by Signetics, and as TFB2000 by Texas.
