The UCA 386 Adapter now supports Intel RapidCAD

The elusive Intel RapidCAD Engineering CoProcessor is a weird and rare 2-chip set designed to upgrade 386 computers. It has been released in February 1992 for $499 and sold as a coprocessor. Technically, the RapidCAD is a 486DX assembled inside a 132-pin ceramic package that plugs into a standard 386 Socket. It features an integrated FPU but Intel removed the 8KB L1 cache and the 486-specific instructions. A second chip (RapidCAD-2) plugs into the 387 Socket, is only needed to provide the #FERR signal used to handle FPU exceptions.

This early sample has been assembled in April 1992 with dies from December 1991. The RapidCAD is able to work at any frequencies from 16 to 33 MHz. The lack of L1 cache and the slower 386 bus used does not provide a significant boost in Integer performances, but the FPU is the fastest available for 386s. The Universal Chip Analyzer is now able to fully test RapidCAD up to 33 MHz.

For some reasons, my sample was unable to run at 12.5 MHz, but works fine from 16 to 33 MHz. It’s probably due to the modification on the internal PLL needed to adapt a 486 CPU (1x clock signal expected) to a 386 Socket (2x clock required). PLLs often have limited top/bottom frequency lock range.

The reported CPUID is 0x340 and the power consumption is quite high (~2W typical in INT, ~2.5W in FPU) for a 386. I ran some INT benchmark only at 33 MHz and I got a score of 105.7 while a standard Intel 386DX-33 (or Am386DX-33) got 99.6. That’s only a 6% increase. The RapidCAD is much faster on FPU, being up to 70% faster than an Intel 387.