It looks as though what Intel Corp refused to do for the Advanced Computing Environment Initiative will be done under other colours after all. In last week’s episode, we had Intel refusing the repeated pleas of Compaq Computer Corp and other personal computer vendors inside ACE to create a new Advanced RISC Computing-like standard for iAPX-86-based machines, complete with an ARC-like Hardware Abstraction Layer. Now it appears in a story published in Computer Retail News that that’s exactly what’s afoot in the personal computer camp – with Intel, Compaq, Microsoft Corp and IBM Corp as players, and a game plan that tries to equal workstation performance with an iAPX-86 machine. We know Compaq wrote the specification when it was still a ploy – Systems & Network Integration says it even has a prototype up and running – but whether this can ever amount to anything more than a high-end personal computer depends on sorting out fact from propaganda. Intel, after all, is said to have lopped a year off its P5 (80586) design cycle just to compete with the RISC chips.
