| NexGen | |
|---|---|
| Fate | Purchased by AMD |
| Successor | AMD |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Defunct | 1996 |
| Location | USA |
| Products | central processing units |
NexGen (Milpitas, CA) was a private semiconductor company that designed x86 PC central processing units until it was purchased by AMD in 1996. Year 1986 ( MCMLXXXVI) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar) Year 1996 ( MCMXCVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar) A semiconductor' is a Solid material that has Electrical conductivity in between a conductor and an insulator; it can vary over that Generally a company is a form of Business organization. The precise definition varies See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal A personal computer ( PC) is any Computer whose original sales price size and capabilities make it useful for individuals and which is intended to be operated Year 1996 ( MCMXCVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar) NexGen chips were compatible with the x86 instruction set, but were not x86 clones of Intel's chips, operating internally with a version of RISC architecture dubbed "RISC86". [1] Like competitor Cyrix, NexGen was a fabless design house that designed its chips but relied on other companies for production. Cyrix was a CPU manufacturer that began in 1978 in Richardson Texas as a specialist supplier of high-performance math co-processors for 286 and A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of Hardware devices implemented on Semiconductor NexGen's chips were produced by IBM's Microelectronics division. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology
History
The company was started in 1986, being funded by Compaq, ASCII and Kleiner Perkins. Compaq Computer Corporation was an American Personal computer company founded in 1982 and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard. was a Publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan, and was one of the key players in the creation of the MSX standard home computer in Japan Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB is a Venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley. Its first design was targeted at the 80386 generation of processors. But the design was so large and complicated it could only be implemented using eight chips instead of one and by the time it was ready, the industry had moved onto the 80486 generation. The Intel 486, otherwise known as the 80486 i486 or just 486 was the first tightly pipelined X86 design
Its second design, the Nx586 CPU, was introduced in 1994, was the first CPU to attempt to compete directly against Intel's Pentium, with its Nx586-P80 and Nx586-P90 CPUs. Year 1994 ( MCMXCIV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full 1994 Gregorian calendar) The Pentium brand refers to Intel 's single-core x86 Microprocessor based on the P5 fifth-generation Microarchitecture. Unlike competing chips from AMD and Cyrix, the Nx586 was not pin-compatible with the Pentium or any other Intel chip and required its own custom NxVL-based motherboard and chipset. NexGen offered both a VLB and a PCI motherboard for the Nx586 chips. The VESA Local Bus (usually abbreviated to VL-Bus or VLB) was mostly used in personal computers The Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI Standard (commonly PCI) specifies a Computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a Computer
Like the later Pentium-class CPUs from AMD and Cyrix, clock for clock it was more efficient than the Pentium, so the P80 ran at 75 MHz and the P90 ran at 84 MHz. Unfortunately for NexGen, it measured its performance relative to a Pentium using an early chipset; improvements included in Intel's first Triton chipset increased the Pentium's performance relative to the Nx586 and NexGen had difficulty keeping up. Unlike the Pentium, the Nx586 had no built-in math coprocessor; an optional Nx587 provided this functionality. A coprocessor is a Computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU
In later Nx586's, a x86 math coprocessor was included on-chip. See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal Using IBM's multichip module (MCM) technology, NexGen combined the 586 and 587 die in a single package. The new device, which used the same pinout as its predecessor, was marketed as the Nx586-PF100 to distinguish it from the FPU-less Nx586-P100.
Compaq, which had backed the company financially, announced its intention to use the Nx586 and even struck the name "Pentium" from its product literature, demos, and boxes, substituting the "586" moniker, but never used NexGen's chip widely. Compaq Computer Corporation was an American Personal computer company founded in 1982 and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard.
When AMD's K5 chip failed to meet performance and sales expectations, AMD purchased NexGen, largely to get the design team and the Nx586's follow-up design, which became the basis for the commercially successful AMD K6. The K5 was AMD's first x86 processor developed entirely in-house introduced in March 1996 The K6 microprocessor was launched by AMD in 1997 The main advantage of this particular microprocessor is that it was designed to fit into existing desktop designs for
References
External links
- CPU-INFO: NexGen Nx586, indepth processor history
- AMD: Nx586 Processor
- cpu-world: Nx586 Processor
- Nx586
- Nx686
- Coprocessor.info : NexGen Nx587 information and pictures
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