Intel Corp’s going to have a much bigger dog snapping at its heels following news that National Semiconductor Corp has produced working versions of its Cyrix Corp subsidiary’s 6x86MX Pentium II compatible CPU in 0.25 micron technology. Nat Semi says it’ll produce 10 million of the parts this year. It’s not yet clear if or how Cyrix will be able to use information on the Pentium II design that Nat Semi is entitled to under their cross- license agreement (CI No 3,296). Although Intel is hardly shaking in its boots (its chips are used in some 90% of PCs) manufacturers such as IBM, DEC and Compaq are ensuring they are not tied to Intel exclusively by sourcing microprocessors from compatible suppliers.
