NexGen Microsystems Inc, the Milpitas, California-based processor technology company, is negotiating with IBM Corp’s IBM Microelectronics to fabricate its iAPX-86-compatible RISC chip set, which it claims delivers similar performance to Intel Corp’s Pentium. NexGen is a private company that numbers Compaq Computer Corp and Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA among its investors. It has based its 60MHz and 66MHz Nx586 processors on the F86 project, an eight-chip 80386 implementation that it completed in 1991, too late to be commercially viable (CI No 1,644). Aimed at the mainstream personal computer market, the Nx586 has been reduced to the Central Processing Unit and the Nx587 Floating Point Unit processor, which the firm has made optional because it believes that most business applications are integer-based. There is also a Systems Logic chip, and an optional VESA local bus chip, with a Peripheral Component Interconnect chip to follow shortly. It hopes IBM will make the chip using its 0.5 micron facility in Burlington, Vermont, but NexGen is also negotiating with other potential suppliers of foundry capacity in case the IBM deal falls through; it clearly needs big companies with broadbrush patent cross-licence agreements with Intel to minimise the legal flak it is certain to receive. The Nx586, which has different pin-outs from the Pentium, will need a special motherboard and so Nexgen has signed four motherboard manufacturers: Tangent, Compu-Tek, Adisys and Lucky Computer. They will introduce systems in the second quarter starting at $1,800. NexGen says that the chip’s core performance is greater than Intel’s Pentium, but that on the motherboard, performance is held back to Pentium speeds by the multiprocessing-biased NexBus, a throwback from its F86 days when the firm was trying to attack higher end markets. The 586 will be aimed initially at what NexGen calls tier three manufacturers – mainstream system vendors that are not household names. The firm, which has never produced any revenue, has dismissed the server, workstation and multiprocessing markets in the short term. It is looking for volume sales to recover the amount that it has spent on the project since 1988, which amounts to over $60m; it says it still has enough cash to see it through to the end of next year. The firm will also sell to more popular vendors should they want the product, something that should warm the hearts of Compaq and Olivetti, who have made no commitments to use the chip as yet. Should they or anyone else wish to, pricing per thousand is $460 for the 60MHz Nx586, $506 for the 66MHz version. These are planned to ship in the second quarter. The floating point units ship in the summer at $128 for 1,000-up, while the VESA local bus part costs $86 now.
