Intel Formally Rolls Out Powerful Computer Chip

After three years of development and many months of hype, Intel Corp. on Monday formally unveiled its Pentium microprocessor, a high-powered chip designed to set the standard for next-generation personal computers.

Nearly all major PC vendors are expected to produce Pentium-based machines, with the first systems appearing in May. But high prices and limited supplies will at first limit the Pentium to expensive, top-of-the-line PCs used for corporate computer networking or engineering applications.

Consumer-oriented Pentium machines--and much of the new software that will make those machines worth the extra money--will not begin hitting the market until sometime next year. Eventually, though, Pentiums could vastly expand the capabilities of standard desktop PCs, enabling them to run several times faster than current models and easily handle sophisticated graphics and video.

For Intel, Pentium is the key weapon in extending its near-monopoly on PC chips, which began with the 8086 in the early 1980s and extended through the 286, the 386 and the 486, which is currently the standard for all but the cheapest PCs (and desktop machines made by Apple Computer).

The so-called x86 family has produced huge profits for Intel, but the company faces challenges from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and others that have produced clones of the 386 and 486.

More important, Intel must beat back the challenge from vendors of RISC workstations, which are much more powerful than PCs but cost more and cannot run the reams of software written for Intel-based machines.

The Pentium incorporates some elements of RISC design and it approaches--though it doesn’t quite match--the performance of RISC chips from Mips Technologies, Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment and an IBM/Motorola/Apple consortium.

Intel Chief Executive Andrew Grove called the chip a technological marvel that will help fill the insatiable demand by software developers and the public for more powerful computer engines.

The development of workstations and PCs based on the Pentium will coincide with the release later this year of sophisticated operating systems such as Microsoft Corp.’s Windows NT. Its power will enable applications featuring full-motion video, 3-D modeling and speech recognition.

Intel said its new chip will be 100% compatible with all existing software applications that run on Intel chips.

Intel’s microprocessor division chief, Paul Otelleni, said the company plans to ship 10,000 Pentium processors in the second quarter of 1993, “hundreds of thousands” through the end of the year and a total of 1 million in 1994.

Kimball Brown, a vice president at the Santa Clara market research firm Info Corp., said Intel is faced with high early production costs but had no alternative to bringing the Pentium to market now.