Seems Digital Equipment Corp will announce next week that it will be the first US company to take Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s K6 chip pretender to Intel Corp’s Pentium II throne. Advanced Micro told shareholders last Thursday about the Digital win, and also said several top-tier vendors were evaluating the chip, hinting at the likes of IBM Corp and Compaq Computer Corp. Digital’s personal computer arm will apparently use the K6 with MMX – yes the courts said AMD does now have the right to use the term MMX (CI No 3,122) – in its entry-level Venturis FX-2 desktop machines. The K6 is said to give top-of-the-range Pentium Pro performance at 25% lower cost, and Digital is obviously hoping to cash in on the cost savings. The Venturis K6 models will be offered for the Windows 95 and NT markets, for which the K6 is supposed to be optimized. Other Venturis models will apparently offer Pentiums and Pentiums with MMX. Advanced Micro also said Hewlett-Packard Co will announce this week it will use the company’s K5 chip in its Vectra 500 series of personal computers for small businesses. To date, German computer maker Vobis Microcomputer AG and Japan’s Fujitsu-ICL have agreed to use the K6 in future machines.
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