A 80386-compatible part integrating 100m transistors which would include two vector processors, vast cache, real-time video and graphics, bus interface and powerful self-test capability is in Intel Corp’s plan for the turn of the century. The company has been lifting the veil a little on life after the 80486, reaffirming that the 80386 instruction set and basic architecture will be the basis of the company’s complex instruction set microprocessors to the year 2000 and beyond. The original 80386 in 1985 integrated 275,000 transistors, the 80486 has 1.2m and the 80586 will have between 4m and 5m transistors and provide twice the power of the 1992 version of the 80486 according to Intel’s management information services programme manager Ann Lewnes. One problem Intel has to crack with the 80586 is to get the power consumption down to that of the 80586 so that kit build around it will not require bigger cooling fans. Intel is also working on low power consumption versions of the 80386, 80486 and 80586 for use in laptops, according to Ms Ann Lewnes. As for the end-of-decade 80886 or whatever it’s called, Ms Lewnes says it will enable Intel to do neural nets and massively parallel systems.
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