Demonstrating that consistency is not one of its strong suits, Intel Corp yesterday introduced its 20MHz 80486 with the maths co-processor stripped out as the 80486SX – despite the fact that the thing has a 32-bit bus where up to now the SX subscript has been taken to signify the 16-bit bus of the 32-bit internal 80386SX. Equally inconsistent, the company is calling the modified version of the 80486 with the floating point logic the 80487, despite the fact that the part includes the arithmetic logic unit of the 80486 as well as the maths unit – the 80487 is designed to plug into a co-processor socket on an 80486SX board, when it takes over all the functions of the 80486SX. It costs $800. The 80486SX is $258, half the price of the full 80486, but by virtue of the 8Kb of on-chip cache is claimed to run 35% faster than an 80386 machine with external caches. IBM is to announce PS/2s using the new chip today and AST Research Inc will announce a machine using it that starts at $3,000. Dell Computer Corp had also demonst rated unannounced 80486SX machines.
