🚀 go-pugleaf

On 24 Nov 1996 13:08:28 GMT, zarlenga@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga)
wrote:

>Are there any functional differences at all between the AMD
>K5 CPU and the Intel i586 ("Genuine Pentium") CPU?

No, not really, basically all software will work on either chip.

>Is the AMD K5 chip made under license agreement with Intel,
>hence the functional equivalent of the i586?  And, if made
>under license agreement, I presume the process and surface
>masks are identical, yes?

No, up until the AMD 486 lineup, AMD was making clones of Intel's products.
But now AMD has its own unique design which shares nothing with Intel's
equivalent products, the Pentium or PentiumPro. Mhz for Mhz, an AMD K5 is
somewhere between a Pentium and PentiumPro for real performance. But the
architecture is unique to AMD. The software can't tell the difference
usually (even low-level software like operating systems), because software
is too high-level in the CPU's functional layers these days. It used to be
the software was the lowest level available, but nowadays the CPU's have
various levels lower still.

>Are there any reasons why the K5 might be an inferior CPU
>when compared to a "Genuine Pentium," functionally?

AMD is not making CPUs that are as fast as the Intels, MHz-wise. The
highest speed K5 is equivalent to a Pentium 133 nowadays. AMD is behind in
this field, but likely it'll be able to catch up in a few months.

					Yousuf Khan
--
Yousuf J. Khan
ykhan@achilles.net
Ottawa, Ont, Canada
Nation's capital