A new floating point co-processor from Sunnyvale, California-based Weitek Corp promises to boost the performance of Intel’s new generation 80486 microprocessor close to that achieved by its high performance RISC chip, the 80860. Although the 80486 includes an extended version of the 80387 floating point chip included on board, Weitek claims its latest Abacas processor, the 4167, will complete maths operations five to six times faster than the on-chip unit, delivering 17M-Whetstones of single precision numerics performance on a 80486 machine running at 25MHz, compared with 7M-Whetstones delivered by the 80486 alone.Using the same benchmarks, the 80860 delivers 18.5 MWhetstones, and the R3000 RISC chip from MIPS Computer Systems Inc a comparable 17M-Whetstones.Support for the processor is via a 142-pin grid array socket that needs to be designed on to the system board, which according to Weitek will provide all the signals necessary to interface the two chips.Previously, Weitek was able to use the 80387 socket normally included with 80386-based systems.The 4167, however, is fully compatible with the existing Weitek 3167 co-processor, allowing previously supported software to run unaltered.The 1.0 micron CMOS, 25MHz part has 16 64-bit data registers (twice the number on the 80486 unit) and a memory mapped protocol that allows it to gather instructions and data from both the address and data buses of the 80486.It also has a 64-bit floating point data path said to be 500% faster than the 80486, 50% faster than that of the 80860.Samples September, limited production by year-end, $565 for 1,000-up.
