Vitesse Semiconductor Corp, the Camarillo, California company making Gallium Arsenide versions of the top-selling AMD 2900 bit-slice familty, is on the up-and-up. Now that it is getting higher yields per wafer, it has been able to cut prices on the 29G00 parts by up to 80%: the 29G01 4-bit microprocessor slice is now $50; the 29G02 carry-look-ahead is now $20, and the 29G10 sequencer is now $90, all in volumes of 100 or more, and reckons the parts are now competitive with ECL. Almost every minicomputer in the business has done a basic 2901 design of its CPU, so it shouldn’t be too long before we see the first top-end minicomputer built in GaAs.
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