Intel Corp officials have been talking about the next chip in the iAPX-86 family, the 80486, with senior vice president Dave House saying that it will be out next year, and chairman Gordon Moore stressing that the part will be aimed at high-end applications and not the mass market. One reason for that is that the company does not have the capacity to make the 486 in the volumes it is churning out the 80386. Intel also made clear that the 80486 is seen as a premium product with an implied premium price-tag. The CPU is believed to be tailored to large-scale parallel processing – Intel has also said in the past that it will be optimised for artificial intelligence applications – and according to Electronic News, Boeing Co, Hughes Aircraft and Unisys Corp already have samples.
