Not to be left out of the limelight during Microprocessor Forum week, thePowerPC community rallied to show that there’s still some life in their architecture yet. San Jose-base Exponential Technology Inc duly announced its BiCMOS PowerPC implementation, (CI No 3,010), clocking the Exponential X704 at 533MHz. The company claims the new part should be especially attractive to power users of the Macintosh wanting uncompromised performance for their high-end graphics and multimedia applications. Apple is planning to use the chip, which will enter volume production in the second quarter of next year at $1,000 a time for large volume production orders. Separately, Motorola Inc’s RISC Microprocessor division announced pricing and general availability for enhanced versions of its 603e part, running at 240 and 225MHz. The chips, aimed at desktops and notebooks, are manufactured using Motorola’s 0.35 micron process technology. The clock speeds exceeded Motorola’s goal of getting to 200MHz by the end of this year. They are priced at $425 for the 240MHz version and $346 for the 225MHz version, in quantities of 1,000. The first to take the part is Fremont, California-based Umax Computer Corp, which launched its SuperMac c600/240 mini-tower Macintosh compatible. It comes with 24Mb RAM, 256K of level 2 cache, IMb of video memory on the motherboard, CD-ROM, modem and 2.1Gb hard drive, and is priced at $2,295, available immediately.
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