Now that Advanced Micro Devices Inc is in bitter dispute with Intel Corp over the latter’s refusal to hand over 80386 masks, it has little interest in being deferential over the iAPX-86 parts for which it does have the masks, and yesterday it made a pitch for leadership in the lively market for high-speed versions of the advanced 16-bit 80286. The success of the Compaq Deskpro 286 now that it is fitted with 12MHz 80286s shows that while many users want speed, they are not prepared to pay a big premium for 80386-based Personalikes, and so AMD has come out with the first 16MHz version of the part. The 80286-16, matching the speed of the slowest 80386 – and, running MS-DOS, almost matching its performance – will be available in November, initially at $150, against $120 for the 12MHz version and around $60 for the original 6MHz version. The vitality of the 80286 market is indicated by figures from Dataquest, which suggest that in the first quarter of this year, 1.72m were sold, 1.2m by Intel, 400,000 by AMD, and 71,000 and 39,000 respectively by the other two second sources, Siemens and Fujitsu.
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