Intel Corp promises to steal most of the headlines at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week when it describes a version of the 80486 clocked at 100MHz – the fastest available runs at 33MHz – and claimed to deliver 60 MIPS or more. The submicron triple layer metal CMOS part integrates 1.2m transistors, and Intel says that the experimental part – don’t look for one on your desktop anytime soon – is one of a string of technical breakthroughs that must be achieved to reach the company’s goal of producing a 100m transistor microprocessor (to be upwards-compatible with the 80386), operating at 250MHz, and delivering 2 GIPS – 2,000 MIPS, by the year 2000.
