New Pentium means no peace for PPC partners.(The Second Decade)(Column)

Remember when the PowerPC was going to blow the Pentium out of the water? It hasn't happened, it's not going to, and anyone who's been banking on it -- starting with Apple -- better sober up soon.

Splitting hairs

The latest report from the processor front came last month, when Intel Corp. began delivering a 120-MHz version of the Pentium. The new chip is rated at 140 SPECint92 (with a 1-Mbyte secondary cache); the fastest PowerPC generally available, the 110-MHz 601, scores about 115 on the same scale of integer performance.

The real significance of the new Pentium, however, lies in the cutting-edge technology Intel is using to build it: It's the first high-volume microprocessor based on a 0.35-micron process. (That means the metal threads that carry signals inside the chip measure one-three-hundredth the diameter of a human hair.) First-generation Pentiums -- the butt of so many wisecracks about heat and size, as well as some real questions about manufacturing economics -- were based on a 0.8-micron process. Intel negated most of those criticisms a year ago, when it moved to a process it classifies as 0.6-micron.

By contrast, the newest PowerPCs are produced on a 0.5-micron process; IBM Corp. is not expected to reach the 0.35 mark for at least nine months, and Motorola Inc. will be even later, according to the authoritative Microprocessor Report.

Intel has spent billions to push its way ...