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A new chip,which its manufacturers hope will provide stiff competition for the world's leading microprocessor manufacturer Intel, being showcased at Asia's biggest personal computing trade show this week.

 Cyrix will unveil its Pentium II-class microprocessor based on socket 7 board design - which is half the price of Intel's equivalent offering - at Computex Asia in Taiwan.

 It is estimated that Intel holds 85 per cent of the world microprocessor market.

 Cyrix Asia-Pacific vice-president Everett Roach said the new chips were aimed at the desktop markets for small businesses and home users, who are targeted by the company as value-sensitive buyers.

 'The demand for high power from small businesses and home users is always there as long as the prices are affordable,' he said.

 'The drive behind the launch of 6x86MX chips is to set a new standard for price-performance for desktop computers,' he said.

 The Texan firm expects 166MHz 6x86MX-based PCs with digital video disc-Rom drives to hit the market this summer for below US$1,500.

 The company will demonstrate systems running on its new chips - which have been built by some relatively unknown original equipment manufacturer partners - at Computex Taipei.

 The Cyrix 6x86MX processor, formerly code-named M2, has the same capabilities as Pentium II. It supports the MMX (multimedia extension) instruction set, dynamic execution and 80-bit floating point calculation.

 But it entailed 64K internal cache - double that of Intel's Pentium II but the same as Advanced Micro Devices' K6, said Mr Roach.

 Three versions of the 6x86MX with clock speeds rated at 166 MHz, 200 MHz and 233 MHz are now available, while a 266 MHz design will be out at the end of the year.

 The three models, from low to high speed, are priced at $190, $240 and $320 in quantities of 1,000.

 Intel's price for a 233 MHz Pentium II is $636.

 The two lower-speed 6x86MX chips compete in price with Intel's Pentium MMX microprocessors which cost $270 for 166 MHz and $492 for 200 MHz.

 Mr Roach said that in comparison with Pentium II, the 6x86MX based on open architecture - socket 7 - allows motherboard manufacturers to adopt the new technology on existing boards thus keeping the total cost of manufacturing at a low level.

 He criticised Intel for attempting to monopolise the market by changing the packaging of Pentium II from pin grid array to single edge contact, in which different components including level-2 cache are integrated into a black box that fits into a dedicated slot on board.

 He said Intel's Pentium II design had taken away users' flexibility to reconfigure the board design. 'End-users should be given the freedom to choose any CPU, an Intel or non-Intel design, as they can move the chip on-board simply by lifting the handle of socket 7 and plug in a new one,' he said. 'We have agreed with other non-Intel chip-makers including AMD to extend the life of socket 7 architecture.'  An open standard for PC making is desirable, particularly in Asia, where the do-it-yourself market is significant. Many PC buyers prefer to create their own systems by sourcing separate parts of computers including motherboards and add-on cards from channel distributors, though prices of brand-name models are dropping quickly to compete with this market segment.

 At Computex, another US company, IDT, will show its C6 Pentium-class x86 microprocessor with MMX capability running on 200MHz.

 The IDT-C6 based on socket 7 is marketed as a low-power and low-cost solution and is between 40 and 50 per cent smaller than other Pentium-class CPUs.



Company hopes cheaper model will steal trade from market leader Intel