The semiconductor industry is having to run ever faster just to stand still, and the challenge posed to its complex instruction set business by parts like Digital Equipment Corp’s new Alpha RISC has persuaded Intel Corp that it has to shorten the generations in its iAPX-86 family. The 80586 is not yet announced, but already, reports the Wall Street Journal, the company is saying that deliveries of the 80686 – code-named P6 are planned to start late next year – and the company is already talking about the features it is designing into the P7, destined to appear as the 80786. The 80586 is expected to represent a fairly modest advance on the 80486, but the 80686, with many RISC features designed in, is expected to represent another leap forward.
