NexGen, Inc. was a private

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

company based in

Milpitas, California Milpitas (Spanish for or little cornfields) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, part of Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, it is bordered by San Jose, California, S ...

, that designed

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

s until it was purchased by

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

on January 16, 1996. NexGen was a

fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

design house that designed its chips but relied on other companies for production. NexGen's chips were produced by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Microelectronics Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre ...

division in

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, alongside

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

and

DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...

parts. The company was best known for the unique implementation of the x86 architecture in its processors. NexGen's CPUs were designed very differently from other processors based on the x86 instruction set at the time: the processor would translate code designed to run on the traditionally CISC-based x86 architecture to run on the chip's internal

RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...

architecture. The architecture was used in later AMD chips such as the K6, and to an extent most x86 processors today implement a "hybrid" architecture similar to those used in NexGen's processors. It went public in 1994, and was bought by AMD in 1995 for $850M. The technology forms the platform architecture for all of AMD's current microprocessors. It was an unusual start-up in its time as the original funding came from corporate investors,

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...

and

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been owned b ...

, joined in a later round by

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm

Kleiner Perkins Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

History

The company was founded in 1986 by

Thampy Thomas A. Thampy Thomas (born ) is an electrical engineer who contributed to microprocessor pipeline architecture and founded semiconductor company NexGen microsystems. Elxsi In 1979, Thomas co-founded Elxsi, a semiconductor company in Silicon Vall ...

, being funded by Compaq,

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and

. Its first design was targeted at the

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architect ...

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. Its second design, the Nx586 CPU, introduced in 1994, was the first CPU to attempt to compete directly against

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Pentium Pentium is a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel from 1993 to 2023. The Pentium (original), original Pentium was Intel's fifth generation processor, succeeding the i486; Pentium was Intel's flagship proce ...

, with its Nx586-P80 and Nx586-P90 CPUs. Unlike competing chips from AMD and

Cyrix Cyrix Corporation was a microprocessor developer that was founded in 1988 in Richardson, Texas, as a specialist supplier of floating point units for 286 and 386 microprocessors. The company was founded by Tom Brightman and Jerry Rogers. Ter ...

, the Nx586 was not

pin-compatible In electronics, pin-compatible devices are electronic components, generally integrated circuits or expansion cards, sharing a common footprint and with the same functions assigned or usable on the same pins. Pin compatibility is a property des ...

with the Pentium or any other Intel chip and required its own custom NxVL-based motherboard and

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. The chipset is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chips ...

. NexGen offered both a VLB and a PCI motherboard for the Nx586 chips. Like the later Pentium-class CPUs from AMD and Cyrix,

clock A clock or chronometer is a device that measures and displays time. The clock is one of the oldest Invention, human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month, a ...

for clock it was more efficient than the Pentium, so the P80 ran at 75 MHz and the P90 ran at 83.3 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. Furthermore, PCs identified the Nx586 as an 80386 processor; as a result many applications that require a processor faster than a 386 will not work unless CPU identification software is active. Unlike the Pentium, the Nx586 had no built-in math

coprocessor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography or ...

; an optional Nx587 provided this functionality. In later Nx586s, an x87 math coprocessor was included on-chip. 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 In electronics, a pinout (sometimes written "pin-out") is a cross-reference between the contacts, or ''pins'', of an electrical connector or electronic component, and their functions. "Pinout" now supersedes the term "basing diagram" which was the ...

as its predecessor, was marketed as the Nx586-PF100 to distinguish it from the FPU-less Nx586-P100.

, 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. Instead, Alaris, Inc., a smaller computer systems maker, became the first company to ship a computer with the Nx586 in fall 1994. AMD purchased NexGen when AMD's K5 chip failed to meet performance and sales expectations. Some NexGen customers were even given free AMD K5 CPUs with motherboards in exchange for sending in their NexGen hardware. Development of AMD's internal K5 successor was halted in favor of continuing from NexGen's Nx686 designs, eventually becoming K6.{{cite web , last1=Halfhill , first1=Tom , title=AMD K6 Takes On Intel P6 , url=https://halfhill.com/byte/1996-1_amd-k6.html , website=Byte , access-date=30 October 2021

References

External links

NexGen datasheets

CPU-INFO: NexGen Nx586, indepth processor history

(archived version)
cpu-world: Nx586 Processor

Coprocessor.info : NexGen Nx587 information and pictures
AMD 1986 establishments in California 1994 initial public offerings 1996 disestablishments in California 1996 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Santa Clara County, California Computer companies disestablished in 1996 Computer companies established in 1986 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area