Stretch Inc., a fabless semiconductor company based in Mountain View California, USA, on Monday announced the S5000 family of software-configurable processors, the first to embed powerful programmable logic within an off-the-shelf processor.

The 300Mhz chip outperformed the 2GHz chip. Stretch Inc. says that its processor is the first that can add new instructions while operating since the programmable logic is embedded inside the microprocessor.

The reason why the 300Mhz chip has outperformed 2Ghz competition is unclear. The chip wars between AMD and Intel, has taken computing to a level where GHz defines the latest processor and not the user requirements. Now, the processor giants have realised that many other factors like cache, architecture, FSB, etc. also determine how fast their processors can go.

The Stretch processor will become available in a number of configurations during 2004 and will cost between $35 and $100 in production quantities.