Industry watchers in the US are expecting workstation manufacturers to begin announcing products based around Intel’s 80860 RISC processor over the next few months as Intel is reported to have completed a version of Unix System V.4 on to the chip and is to begin shipping it to beta test sites. One is expected to come out with a machine that will best similar RISC offerings from the likes of IBM, Sun and MIPS Computer Systems. Intel spun out most 80860 system development back in November to California-based Aquest Inc, founded by former members of the 80860 development team – a company in which Intel has taken a stake. SPECmarks of 20.6 – at 33MHz – and 24.3 – at 40MHz – are the highest so far awarded by the SPEC benchmarking group for a single-processor CMOS system, and Intel already counts workstation manufacturers Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, IBM and now Sun Microsystems as 80860 users, typically as graphics workhorses in co-processor and add-in boards.
