June 1994 / Cover Story

80x86 Wars	It's hard to accept the argument that the Intel 80x86 architecture or its underlying CISC technology is staggering on the brink of extinction. On the contrary, the next few years will see the broadest proliferation of the architecture since the 8086's debut in 1978. - by Tom R. Halfhill
NexGen Nx586 Straddles the RISC/CISC Divide	First and foremost, the NexGen Nx586 is an 80x86 architecture processor; thus, it supports all 80x86 instructions and programmer-visible registers. - by Bob Ryan
A Billion-Dollar Ball Game	There are three ways to make a faster microprocessor: increase the clock speed; design a better microarchitecture; or increase the transistor density.
System Vendors Like Variety	System vendors and motherboard manufacturers will generally welcome the arrival of Pentium-class processors from AMD, Cyrix, and NexGen, even if some of them don't anticipate using any chips other than Intel's.
BYTE Lab Benchmarks the First P54C Systems Feature And Performance Comparison	The BYTE Lab received five beta P54C Pentium-based systems for preliminary testing. - by Rick Grehan and Selinda Chiquoine
An 80x86-Compatible PowerPC?	The most exotic application of CISC-to-RISC instruction translation might be IBM's rumored PowerPC 615 (IBM won't confirm or deny its existence).

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