Powerful chip adds muscle to desktop

Santa Clara, Calif.Powerful publishing software that previously could run only on a large mainframe computer will descend to the desktop as a result of Intel Corp.'s newest and mightiest microprocessor, the i486.

The i486-heir apparent to Intel's 286 and 386 microprocessor chips widely used in today's IBM and clone desktop computers-made its debut in June in an upgrade for IBM's Personal System/2 Model 70-A21. IBM officials said they envision desktop publishing and graphics as two important applications areas for the i486 in the 1990s.

'The i486's sheer speed is going to empower the graphics designer to do much more complicated designs in less time," says Sally Erickson, Intel Corp. product marketing manager.

The i486 has the same 32bit architecture, 'so it runs exactly the same software.such as Aldus' PageMaker, which runs on 286 and 386 systems.

One example of a powerful publishing software package previously available only on mainframes-but which can now operate on highend 386 and i486 PC-based systems-is IBM Interleaf Publisher, developed for IBM by Interleaf Inc.

IBM Interleaf Publisher requires at least six megabytes of RAM (random access memory), a minimum 40megabyte hard disk, and costs more than $2,000. For that price, however, the user gets high-end word processing integrated with graphics editing and layout capabilities.

Another recently announced Intel chip-the i860-will further boost the performance of graphics workstations. Specifically designed for high-end graphics, such as 3-D modeling, the i860 has half the power of a Cray 1 supercomputer, Intel claims.

Intel and IBM have teamed up to develop an i860 add-in card for the PS/2, called the Wizard Card, which will bring much of its 3-D graphics power to the desktop.

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