NEC Corp claims that the latest member of its V-series of microprocessors, the V70, is the fastest complex instruction set microprocessor in the world, rating the thing at 15 MIPS, against 13 MIPS for the Motorola 68030: for those who are lost in the V series, the V20 is fully compatible with the Intel 8088; the V30 ditto with the 8086; the V40 is equivalent to an 80186 with lots of support chips integrated with the CPU; the V50 is a more complex version of the V30 with added functionality, but is compatible only with the 8086 mode of the 80286; the V60 is a 32 bit version of the V50 with a 16-bit bus, and the V70 is a true 32-bit version of the V60, but again – like the 80386 – offers an 8086 compatibility mode but in its native mode is a unique part compatible only with other Vs; sampling of the $800 part is due to start in the autumn with volume set for early 1990.
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