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Intel Attempts to Ban VIA Imports
aibrahim writes "CNET's News.com is reporting Intel's attempt to ban VIA chips and chipsets from U.S. import. This does not yet include, but may be extended to, VIA's Joshua processor.
The ban seems to be based on the violation of intellectual property agreements related to Intel's 'P6 bus.' " For more details on this case, read about their long-running legal battle.
Intel sued Cyrix... and Cyrix sued Intel too.
It depends on the patent. It's not at all clear that what Intel has gotten patents for are worthy of such a monopoly to begin with. Transmeta may actually be in the same exact situation given the absurdity of the current USPTO.
Intel's patents in this area seem more like just a method to lock out competitors from interoperating with it's components. THAT result is not the desired intent of patents or capitalism.
That's kinda the impression I was getting. They licensed this bus from Intel and then release all these competing (suspiciously similar) products. Intel is definitely not in the right, but neither is VIA.
Yes, report them.
"Hot grits" would be better described as Blither or Blather than a Trolling...
On Dec 27, 1999 VIA bought 10+ million shares of S3... this was after s3-via formed a joint venture in November...
I wonder if there is going to be any connection between VIA S3 and Crusoe...
Ah, how fondly I remember upgrading my old P100 to a K6-2/300. First board I bought was a Rise 582E (I think), VIA chipset. Crashed about every 10-15 minutes. Not like a little GPF crash, I'm talking full-tilt bluescreen-of-death fatal crash. But being a very poor college student, I couldn't replace it for a few months. When I did, I got myself a Tyan board (don't recall which), which had the same VIA chipset. Even worse. I had reformatted my drive, and the computer couldn't even fully install the OS without fatally crashing. So, I finally got a nice Asus P5A-B with an ALi chipset, and have been happily using it ever since - haven't seen the bluescreen-of-death once since, and only an occasional GPF. The upshot of this is, if they ban VIA, it really won't be much of a loss AT ALL.
Hey moderator! Look at Slashdots home page for a second. IT'S LITERALLY COVERED WITH IP & PATENT STORIES.
This should be "funny" or not moderated at all, but certainly not "flamebait". Look at your moderator guidelines. It says concentrate on marking posts up rather than down.
There was no mention of Natelie Portman, Grits, the glorious Meept!, etc...
Why is it that when a corporation attempts to control a market (and corporations are tools for controlling markets and not much else) no one notices, but when the government attempts to regulate a market, all the free market wackos scream bloody murder?
Why is it that when a corporation attempts to control a market (and corporations are tools for controlling markets and not much else) no one notices, but when the government attempts to regulate a market, all the free market wackos scream bloody murder? Intel is here doing what it needs to do: monopolize and dominate.
This is the same thing Intel did to AMD, and is just another example of the downright arrogance of Intel. "Ha ha! We'll license our technology to these stupid slant-eyes to prove we're not a monopoly... What? They built a better chip than we did? Let's sue their asses out of business!"
Remember: Intel lawyers have a quota of lawsuits they must file, if they're not suing enough people, Andy Grove gets pissed. And you DON'T want to get Andy Grove pissed! So basically there is a directive to from the Chairman of the company to file lawsuits, regardless of whether or not they have any merit.
It probably won't do anything like SMP. It is just a low end processor like the celeron. Probably will have integrated video and audio. Details are n't the best, because it hasn't been released yet.
The US trade deficit just hit 26.5 billion dollars.
Wow! Bill Gates could pay that almost four times!
-Willtor
"We're all here because we're not all there, tonight!"
--Steven Tyler
I'm really starting to get more than annoyed at Intel, especially after the i820 fiasco. They're also the people responsible for promoting an extremely overpriced RAM standard. And guess what? Rambus recently filed suit against Hitachi for violating some agreement RE the Rambus DRAM they're producing and there's rumors going around that *SEVERAL* other companies will also be sued for the same infringement, including Intel! Good job, Intel...
Some of the best techies I know don't have any college degree at all, just years of dedicated work in the industry...
No, their older commericials implying that buying a new Pentium will actually make the web download faster through that old 28.8KBit modem was the most patently offensive drivel Intel marketing has foisted off on the computer consumer. Clearly their marketing department DOES NOT understand computers, and this is rather annoying to most of us that do!
And even the name "Coppermine" is intentionally misleading. Intel decided NOT to develop copper interconnects, and let IBM get a few years head start. Their solution? Name a product that DOES NOT use copper interconnects to imply that it does! Just more proof that their marketers are from the Coca-Cola school of marketing, and NOT from the computer industry.
The term "verbal diarrea" comes to mind...
Oooh, smart. Let's get rid of the patent system completely. That way when you invent cold fusion GE can just steal it from you and you won't get a damned penny. Damn, you're either one altruistic son of a bitch, or a stupid son of a bitch. I'm not sure which.
This is a classic example of how IP is almost never an incentive to innovate, but does a great job at putting the screws to people who do. (at least with patents)
Creating another company, rebrand the products, and sell *that*... Are you referring to Nintendo v Bung? Small companies with no US presence can get away with stuff like that, but I really doubt that a company like VIA could.
um... Lucas: The Diffie-Hellman patent expired more than 2 years ago.
Intels new slogan??
-How many of you are using Intel machines right now?
-How many of you are using Intel machines but bitching about price/performance anyway?
If Intel were so overpriced you'd all either be using AMDs (only K5 and beyond were comparable to their contemporary Intellish chips) or you'd be using PPCs, which blow them both away but have less serious non-Mac (read 'Linux') support.
Via does not make motherboards nb.
You could care less about Transmeta. All you care about is your damn casino. Anyway, your argument doesn't make any sense because Transmeta is an American company and the Intel/VIA dispute is between an American company and an foreign company. So how could this have anything to do with Transmeta?
I kinda liked it. It's a nice departure from Intel (and AMD...sadly) wasting lots of money coming up with stupid product names.
Pentium? I laughed when I first heard it.
Itanium? What the hell are they smoking over there?
Althalon? Sounds like a pesticide!
Go back to part numbers, 486dx66, 686dx1k, and those of us who really know what we're buying will be happier.
Has anyone else noticed Intel has been sucking more and more since the stupid dancing clean-room engineer ads came out?
Banter requires two parties to a conversation. You are one lonely troll.
(Anyone reading closely will realize that I just provided the second party -- oops.)
I guess a runtime error occured.
;-)
(sorry, i'll go away now
Which would seem to make it "Slashdot Gripes About Patents Day"! :)
Come on, guys... Three in a row? Surely you've got some other stories in need of posting.
I've been waiting all day to say something piddly about Cyrix:
I have a Cyrix! Yay! I'm just glad it's not Intel. Now... I wouldn't mind having an Athlon.. but, eh, oh well.
Thank you. Thank you all for allowing me this post. =)
Insert mind here.
BBBAAAAAA... You sell a better product than I can make, so you can't play in my sandbox!!!
Fuckin' grow up...
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Didn't anyone notice that most of their idiocy and spreading of FUD started after Andy Grove resigned as CEO/President? The new intel CEO is probably another PHB, spreading FUD around and not knowing WTF is going on. Their slogan, "Don't get on the internet get into it" has to be the biggest BS ever. Processors don't have anything to do with the internet, and this slogan was decided AFTER Grove resigned? Intel is coming out with crap now (i820) and releasing products that aren't thurowly tested (CuMine).
Either Andy Grove controlled a lot and made sure they don't release crap before he resigned or the new CEO is just another PHB.
Sure intel had a lot of suing before he resigned, but it seems to have escalated recently. Next computer i'm getting, i think i'll get a AMD.
Wrong AC, it's you who don't care about the topic. That's why your off-topic.
It's a Cyrix MII with a different bus.
S3 has just announced they they are partnered with Transmeta to sell linux based web devices.
This IS on topic!!!
And this is interesting...
D-LINK uses the VIA chipset for many of its DE series ethernet cards....do you think that this deal will cause and end to D-LINK? I have 2 DFE-530TX's here at home and they work great...I'd hate to see such a great company die.
Well, this is more like the argument behind risc.
Ever since riscifying the core and emulating the x86 instruction set in microcode, I guess the chip designers decided that less-oft used functions would be implemented inefficiently in microcode to save silicon so that the most frequently used instructions could be implemented without microcode and so most applications would get a speed up.
For a change, something useful from the Hot Grits troll. I, for one, am impressed.
Intel (tm) Hot Grits - for when you really want hot grits poured down the front of your pants.
It would kinda explain the whole dancing clean-room engineers, wouldn't it.
In any event, many licenses include a clause saying something to the effect of, "This agreement may be terminated at any time by either party." Now whether that's been tested in court, I don't know.
I'd guess most OEM's will wait on the sidelines to see what happens. Why put your company's neck on the line if you don't have to?
--
Linux & Win9x are on the machine. The issue was not OS-related, though - it happened at hard-drive detection time. Both the FIC board and SCSI controller were at their most recent firmware flash revisions.
Since the gripe is about the P6 bus and the Athlon uses EV6 and any complaint they had about that would also involve AMD and Compaq-Digital.
Yes, I know what's going on in the case. I'm saying that it's highly unlikely that Intel would be pursuing a "ban on imports from VIA". It would be more accurate to say they're trying to get an injunction because VIA may be illegally using patented works. There's clear legal precident for that... but Intel is not the department of commerce, and hence does not have *any authority whatsoever* to ban via imports. That was what I was irked about. Slashdot made it sound like they're trying to ban *ALL* via imports. Not true.
Just out of curiosity, all day yesterday discussions were about how cool the new Transmeta chip is. If I remember correctly, Transmeta took out a slew of patents relating to this chip. If someone decided to make something painfully similar to it and take it to market, would Slashdotters expect Transmeta not to protect their patents? Would this much ruckus occur?
Dont get me wrong, I hate seeing big guys stomp on people trying to make it. I also love the idea of a new chip from Transmeta that can do all it can do! I'm just thinking out loud here...
This isn't entirely correct.. When the first Athlon motherboards started to be relased, there were rumors that Intel was threating motherboard manufacturers with withholding chipset supply if the manufacturer produced athlon boards. Intel couldn't provide chipsets for the athlon motherboards becuase the athlon uses a different bus protocol that AMD licensed from DEC/Compaq (the Alpha EV6 bus) Intel has nothing to do with Athlon chipsets. Amd produces chipsets for use on Athlon boards, and so does VIA. The K7M is available just about anywhere online, and it even has the ASUS logo on it now :) ASUS I think has been afraid that if it markets its Athlon motherboard to heavily Intel will retaliate and cut off chipset supply for ASUS's Intel based boards..
Superbad! I guess i'm lucky.. Just picked up a new Epox board with a VIA chipset last week..
Intel has an unfair advantage in the marketplace. We all know that -- Now theyre whining about how their unfair advantage is being threatened! Doesn't this strike anyone as being a little weird?
Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)
Bowie J. Poag
I suppose I'm inviting a horde of flames for saying this, but if Via's liscense agreement for the P6 bus specifically prohibits Via from running it at speeds faster than 100Mhz, then Intel is certainly within its rights to revoke the liscense. Of course, having not seen the liscense, I don't know for sure whether such a clause exists... But if so, Intel has a responsibility to its shareholders to protect market share and ought to pursue this lawsuit... unless their lawyers believe that the liscense agreement will be viewed as anti-competitive in nature and will get them back in hot water with the FTC. Of course, whether or not the liscense agreement will hold up in court is a different matter entirely.
Business is about money, not innovation; remember that.
-NooM
Didn't the anti-trust agreement that Intel reached with the DoJ, a year or so ago forbid this kind of thing?
Why do people insist on perpetuating this falicy?
;)
Crusoe is NOT designed to compete with Intel...
Its designed to compete with AMD
BTW... if Crusoe can support multiple Virtual Machines then if they write a morphing layer for Intel's 64bit processor then it would allow someone to run both new 64bit apps and legacy 16/32bit apps?
Colleen:Its a black-hole.
Hunter:Is that a good thing?
C:It is if you want to be compressed into oblivion.
H:Oh.. coooool.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Simply put, if intel releases a P4 with MMX^3 instructions, all the folks at transmeta have to do is Reverse Engineer the sucker, write some code to emulate what it does on the metal, then burn a CD or post an upgrade for the chips on their website.
they are not limited by what future moves intel does. The hardware is software upgradeable.
Besides that, who gives a rats ass about those "enhanced for Intel" websites anyway? most of them tend to be "ooo-pretty" empty anyway..
If you really want news that matters (but which doesn't specifically implicate nerds) then you'll have to step out of slashdot for a moment.
Florida's new legislation denying death-row inmates due process is being challenged, and Texas is (again) slated to execute a paranoid schizophrenic (Larry Keith Robison) this friday.
The US trade deficit just hit 26.5 billion dollars.
Civil war is still raging in Burundi. Pregnant Burundian refugees in neighboring Tanzania are especially feeling the pinch.
But if you'd rather only busy yourself with tech news, you can always play with stories like National Sorbents, Inc. Introduces DRY N' LOCK Product for the Mortuary Service Industry ("a proprietary new product that dramatically reduces the leakage of body fluids and embalming chemicals from cadavers"). Just think of all the fun you can have with that one!
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Because with a name like KX133, how could it fail? You don't get any more 1337 than that (or should that be KX1337...). Way to target your audience!
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
It probably doesn't do SMP. For the details they've released, look here:
http://www.viatech.com/products/cyrjoshprev.htm
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
There's plenty of Linux support for PPC. We have Debian and RedHat (Not official redhat but LinuxPPC is a legitimate company), and LinuxPPC supports SMP's. I think PPC linux has plenty of "serious" support.
"Your mouse has been moved. Windows 95 must be restarted for the change to take effect."
I'm not sure I understand the concept. Company A patents a valuable design, then licenses it to Company B. B then improves A's design further with B's own IP (I presume) and sells a competing product. In what way can this violate the original license?
What exactly did Via license--the right to productize an unalterable design or the IP itself? What are the limits? Can VIA fix bugs in the P6 core, or do they need permission? Is the agreement available on the web?
My left pinky aches from all those question marks... Maybe I should check Google.
This article from last October says that VIA used Intel's IP for the 133Mhz front side bus and 4X AGP, then tried to protect itself by having National Semi make the chipset, as they have the correct cross-licensing agreements w/ Intel. That raises one more "?". Does intel have the right to stop its cross-licensees from cooperating with each other, as Via did with National Semi?
My original guess that VIA improved the design with its own IP seems to be wrong, but I'm still disturbed that Intel can use its clout to launch new PC standards and lock them down with patents. No wonder intel is so afraid of the "m" word!
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
C'mon! Not all Intel products are evil!
Look at this lowly 8086. Who can help but feel pity for it?
.sig: Now legally binding!
What OS were you running? I had similar problems with Windows on my FIC 503 and my wife's FIC 2013 until I realized that you HAD to install the PCI bus patches that were included on the CD (and the website). I've never had any troubles whatsoever under Linux with any FIC MB i've installed.
Also, I'm now dual booting W2K and Linux. W2K is having similar problems, and I can't install the patch. If I turn DMA on in my bios W2K locks up tight during boot.
"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough." - Larry Wall
I don't know whether this law suit is stupid or not. But the Cyrix cases (which Via uses as evidence that this case is silly) were not stupid. Cyrix got off on a technicality that was ambiguous. Thus it was reasonable for both sides to think they were in the right. But it's still a shame the cases had to go to court.
Intel has provided us with Moore's Law, both in theory and in practice. We should all be greatful for this.
Regarless of whether AMD, Via, Transmeta, or another company temporarily has a product that might be slightly cheaper, faster, or cooler, Intel has consistantly provided a very competative product in good quantity at a competative prices. Not many other companies can come close.
Complaining that Intel doesn't always have the best product is silly. As is complaing about Intel not commiting to providing some companies with as many of a particular chip at a couple of speed ratings, when many other options were avaliable. You should be thankful that such high-end chips were priced so cheaply that so many people wanted them. Obviously, they could have charged more for those same chips. Simiarlly, Intel gets flak from Slashdot readers if it keeps it's prices up above AMD's prices and it gets flak from the same people if it cuts its prices to be more competative. Let's try be a little more reasonable.
Intel has invested in several linux causes, giving them not only cash, but also the credability to be a threat to other big names like MS. They regularly support educational causes such as the International Science and Engineering Fair, the Intel Talent Search, and the Research Science Institute. I only know of these, because I was a part of them. (There are probably many more that I don't even know about.) I've also read about the lengths Intel has gone to respect enviromental concerns (I forget the details, but basically they could make their fabs much cheaper and still meet all the law requirements, but instead chose to spend more money to make thier fabs more environmentally responsible). I think Intel is one of the best citizens we have. Let's give them the respect they deserve.
I've always thought that Intel is more of an anticompetitive company than MSFT - at least Microsoft doesn't try to get SAMBA banned because it uses their coveted SMB protocol.
Intel, in the past, have done some terribly anticompetitive things: they've sued AMD, in the past, for using the Intel instructions under a license Intel granted them, they have spread a large amount of FUD about AMD, Cyrix, Rise, NexGen processors in the past (which is why AMD bought NexGen and Cyrix and Rise both went to VIA, which is the entire point of this article.) Intel also tries to lock people into using Intel processors, but they decided to pay off the DOJ so they can keep on doing this. Even if I want to buy an Athlon (I do), it's very hard to get hold of one because Intel threaten Dell, Gateway etc. with removal of price quotas if they even dare to go for a better chip. The Pentium III is a privacy-stealing kludge.
And remember - Intel wasn't chosen for the original PC because it was the best (IBM were aiming for the Motorola 68000 or some National Semiconductor chip, now forgotten), but because the 8088 supported 8080 hardware and there were no other chips available. In effect, Intel were chosen because they were the worst.
I feel that VIA, and AMD, and the other companies which try to fight against Intel (and AMD win on speed and, especially, price) should be encouraged and supported, just like anti-Microsoft efforts (such as BeOS [I'm getting 5.0!], the Linux support base etc.) because of their own anticompetitive collusions. It's the same thing - freedom from the large corporations, who want to rule your life. Intel is the Microsoft of hardware, which however doesn't care as much about PR because they know at least 50% of the non-Internet connected users (figure unknown) don't even know there's an alternative. Remember that.
This is the first I've ever heard of the Joshua processor.
Does anyone know anything about these? i.e. are there any benchmarks yet? how do they compare
to celerons, can you SMP etc..
An even lower cost SMP setup would be really sweet, I was thinking of getting a dual celeron,
but now I may have to wait and see how these stack up.
--Drive carefully. 90% of people are caused by accidents.
--Drive carefully. 90% of people are caused by accidents.
I would instead look at my lowly 8008 chip. If I could find it. At the moment it's lost in a sea of TTL down in the lab.
Wrong, the KX133 violates NONE of Intels intellectual property, however the Apollo Pro might so you could buy the KX but not the AP. (That is my understanding, I could be wrong) Besides, there are other ways to aquire matierials banned by the ftc.
Stupid is as stupid dies.
If I really wanted to read about the world's problems I would not be on Slashdot. If I wanted to get a quick jist of what is going on in the tech world, then a peek at Slashdot on my lunch hour is what I do.
Now if I could just find a cork...
Now they're suing over the same arcitecture? Hmmmm.
TC
----------
Looking for HAL, found Bender...
TangoChaz
--------------------
Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
transmeta stated themselves in their crusoe-introduction how important it is to be 100% compatible and to be able to display the "cool website of the day" (page 17) every plugin which needs some SIMD-extension (single instruction, multiple data) like 3d-now or MMX will reduce those 100% from crusoe.
Intel won't do anything to Transmeta. Because still Linus is more popular that Crusoe. Doing something bad to Transmeta is like doing something bad to Linus. And, doing something bad to Linus will earn the wrath of the Linux community. A Linux-user boycott won't be the best thing for Intel. After-all, the Crusoe isn't for desktops.
Ummm, this is supposed to be part of the thread beginning with comment #2. sorry about that, folks.
** I would use whatever is cheapest and works well. I have used 3 computers in my home environment over my computing time and all three were Intel machines**
Funny - that's a contradiction. Show me one Intel processor that is being sold for LESS than it's AMD equivalent. You also said that you use what is readily available: Intel is having chip shortages. That is why Gateway and other computor manufacturers are going to AMD. Check out this article for more info.
kwsNI
Usually, this sort of tactic would tend to imply that Intel is somewhat... afraid(?) of the unknown. Just my opinion :)
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
Where's the borg cube with "intel" stamped on to the side?
Microsoft never tried THIS.
first the "shortage" of chipsets, now this?
Let's hope Transmeta and AMD can take over the market.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
I've been thinking that if it's true that the opcodes could be implemented faster at relatively no cost then it's quite possible that they implemented them "badly" just to force compiler to use simpler instructions. Sort of trying to RISCify the x86 by having a bad implementation of the "messy" instructions.
You are forgetting that the user experiences the whole computer, not just the processor. The sad true story is that while AMD processors are just as good as Intel's (if not better, just look at Intel's errata) the companion chipsets are really crappy. And you have to add that the cheaper systems have crappy motherboards (Gateway anyone?). So while the processor is robust and compatible, if you have crappy chipsets (which is all the Super 7's) which renders the whole machine unstable and incompatible. So don't let your AMD fan feelings blind you from the truth: it's more difficult to get a cheap, stable AMD computer than an Intel's one (that's the vantage of Intel's chipsets).
First and foremost Via has a joint venture with S3 that can make the chips under cross license agreement. But it's obvious that Intel is using strong arm tactics which are highlly illigal under US antitrust laws. Now I'm going to be a bit paranoic . Intel and AMD are US companies, so Intel can't really be that bad to AMD. But VIA is a taiwanese company. So it's possible that when the FTC makes the cost-benefit analysis they find that the cost to consumers in US is less than the monopolistic benefits that Intel gets from the rest of the world (and on which it pay's income tax). Ok, may be it's a bit extreme. But I think you should think about it.
I spent this summer working as an intern at Intel, and if there is anything I can tell you about the company, is that they are parinoid about anyone perceiving them as a monopoly. So much so that at new employee orintation that went so far as to show video of M$ in court and tell us exactly what we could and could not do when dealing with customes. I'm not a brainwashed stooge of the Intel Corporation, I own an k6-2, and am verry happy with it, but Intel's quality control processes are some of the best in the industry (I worked for the Corporate Quality Network). When a chip comes out by intel labeld as 700 mhz, that is not its top speed. Infact, that's not even the speed it runs at most of the time. Intel's chips are "quality guarded" to run faster than what they are marketed as (which is why a celeron can be over clocked). I don't like M$, and I don't buy their products. That has nothing to do with the fact that they have a monopoly, but because most of their stuff sucks. Intel makes a lot of good chips, and if I could afford a 4 way P3-Zeon Box I'd buy one in an instant. I support the open source movement, but that doesn't mean I think all software should be free, proprietary soft ware has its place. I feel the same way about hardware. If VIA would have reverse engineered the specs on their own, I would agree with you all the way, but they were lisenced the product and they went and modifed it and then tried to sell it (which according to Intel was a violation of the lisence agreement). I can't beleive that anyone would think that its ok for a company to make an agreement with another company and then go back on it. That is the same reason I see so many people on this group bashing microsoft. Intel may be a large company, and they sell a lot of chips, but they are no evil monopoly. The didn't get there by forcing oem's to ship just intel chips in intel boards, like M$ did with its win32 lisences. Intel also has extensive programs for supporting motherboard manfuactures that make motherboards that directly compete with them. They, however, aren't getting sued. This reason is that those people didn't violate their lisence agreement. The beleive that all companies that are big are evil is ignorant and stupid. A lot of them got there because they had good products.
Did you even read the article? Have you any clue whatsoever what is going on in this case? I realize you were trying to come across as a voice of reason, and you had to hurry to get in to the first ten posts to maximize your karma earnings, but this is ridiculous. Don't do that!
Via has a license to make chips that use the P6 core. They bought it from intel, who sold it thinking that Via couldn't or wouldn't do anything with it, and by selling it relieved ftc pressure somewhat.
Via could no more spin off a company to produce these chips than AMD could make Athlons which fit in the 820 motherboard. This isn't an ideological issue; via isn't at war with intel over some principle. Via Corporation is trying to make money, and Intel Corporation is trying to make money, and intc is suddenly realizing that they aren't as good at it as they used to be.
stoopid karma whore.
Please, think about what you say before you post. What you've said is absolutely laughable.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I can't beleive that anyone would think that its ok for a company to make an agreement with another company and then go back on it.
Or worse yet, deceive anti-trust investigators by licensing your technology to prove that there is competition and then revoking the license when the investigation is over. Then whining about how someone else competing in the chipset market with you. Damn. Some companies have a lot of nerve.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
http://www.asus.com.tw/Produ cts/Motherboard/index.html
Interestingly, when you click on the K7M / K7M-RM the cpu connection button bar adds "Slot A" as an entry. ;)
I have been on an AMD/Asus buying spree lately. I got my g/f an Asus P5A motherboard for her K6-2 and have built a webserver with K6-2 & Asus P5A. These machines have done quite well in relatively different applications - the webserver has been going non-stop for 243 days (running FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE), and my g/f's workstation doesn't have any hardware issues with its wealth of toys. Eg., Hauppauge WinTV 401, Buslogic Multimaster SCSI controlling a Plextor 40X Max CD-ROM (which utterly and completely rocks), and Yamaha 4416 SCSI CD-RW. For some reason the FIC PA-2013 the system had before was unhappy about having the Buslogic controller and IDE drives on the primary controller. Smooth sailing in all cases w/ the ASUS P5A, though.
Also, I'm currently in the specification stage for 2 rackmount Athlon servers. After dealing with vendors to get the Athlon machines set up, I can tell you - it is *not* easy to find higher-end configurations with Athlon. Fortunately, the good people at ASL, Inc. have been very helpful. In fact, they were the first vendor I saw meaningfully demonstrate Athlons (when I was lucky enough to attend Atlanta Linux Showcase last year). If you're looking to build an Athlon server, check them out. They're cool. Tell them ninjaz sent you. ;)
Can you imagine what this world will look like if Intel has the patent right for "a round thing"?
We wouldn't have wheels for our cars, we wouldn't have balls to play with, no ballbearings for industrial use, no hot air balloon festival (except the square or weird-shaped ones), no hoola-hoops, all waterpipes would be triangular or square shape, and so on.
While "patents" and "copyrights" do have their use, the way Intel is exercising their "rights" is not contributing to the world's intellectual richness. Conversely, the more Intel (and other companies) abusing the "patents" and "copyrights" laws to their selfish advantages, the poorer the world is going to be.
Count ourselves lucky, then, since they forget to file for the "a round thing" patent.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Oh, calm down people. Intel can't tell another company to stop importing. It was probably blown out of proportion by another media hound looking for some sensationalized story. Even if they could ban VIA, they could just create another company, sell to them, rebrand the via chipset and sell *that*.
It is in fact fair, and legal, to be monopolistic. It's how you manage to obtain that monopoly that determines whether or not you have broken the law.
Definitely not off-topic. Crusoe is competing with Intel. Or going to attempt to anyway :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
If my memory serves me correctly then Intel repeatedly sued both AMD and Cyrix for stuff and it got into malicious prosecution countersuits.
And the Cyrix guys sad "Intel sued us five times, they never won"
If I remember correctly, the bit field instructions on the Motorola 68020 were also slower than shifting and masking. The index register instructions on the Zilog Z80 were so much slower than other instructions that they were pretty worthless.
Intel's designs are neither uniquely good nor uniquely bad. They're just successful and that makes them a popular target.
- inexpensive
upgrade path. Joshua should be priced about where Celerons are today. Imagine 8x100.-- Terry
On some FIC motherboards (which I assume is what you're talking about), the floppy drive was disabled in the BIOS by default. There is two options you need to change in the setup program to enable it. With about 30 seconds, and a little knowledge, you probably would have been able to keep the motherboard you already had.
I admit this is kinda stupid. But it's not a quality program. It's just the defaults they selected in the setup program. And the person you bought the board from should have been smart enough to tell you that. But if you want to blame the chipset manufacturer, you're welcome to.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
This ban means we won't be seeing the VIA Athlon boards either. VIA can't import chips or mobos if Intel gets the injunction. VIA is the only major gun to not have a top-performing Athlon board out now. No VIA, no increased choice in boards, and we'll be using Irongate for another six-eight months.
.sig: Now legally binding!
You could care less about Transmeta. All you care about is your damn casino. Anyway, your argument doesn't make any sense because Transmeta is an American company and the Intel/VIA dispute is between an American company
/* Just try running Gimp with a 486. You too can experience the windows lock up type thing on linux */.
and an foreign company. So how could this have anything to do with Transmeta?
Well I don't think gambling is entertaining either but that's beside the point. If you can program something sophisticated in a popular web site (be it irritating like with a porn or a casino site) that at least says that it works for a few people.
The point that he is trying to make (I think) is that Intel feels quite threatened by the fact the a small time chip manufacturer may be taking away customers in another country. Their chips are "just too close to ours" or something like that. What we really must look at first is what kind of threat do they actually pose? Are these chips in wide production so that they actually make it to the USA and are there compelte systems that include these processors. Personally if these processors can run linux and they are in cheap systems that would knock about a couple hundred dollars off the price of a similar Intel machine then I just might be there. I am really getting tired of my useless computer and am looking for a replacement.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Usually, this sort of tactic would tend to imply that Intel is somewhat... afraid(?) of the unknown. Just my opinion :)
In business there is a whole field called Risk Assesment that goes into exactly what kind of risks there are out there and how a company is to look at those threats. Companies have lawyers because if they don't sue someone else will. Generally a new slightly similar chip in the marketplace that might challenge them would almost ceternally be a risk. Assessing the risk to the best of their ability is what being a good salesman/businessman/CEO is all about. Generally until they determine what the total risk picutre is they will use the lawyers as a measure to prevent problems.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Hmm, maybe Intel is learning. When AMD came along offering a comperable (if not better) product at cheaper pricing, Intel ignored it and hoped it would go away. -BIG MISTAKE-. Now that VIA is doing the same thing, maybe
Intel is figuring out that they should do something. Of course, trying to ban it may not be the best way...
Intel like Microsoft dosn't really need to care about anything. Technically inclined people use all the either better stuff or cheaper stuff and the rest of the world uses what is easily avaible. I would use whatever is cheapest and works well. I have used 3 computers in my home environment over my computing time and all three were Intel machines. This was not because I especially like Intel but because they were cheap and avaible at the time (since I needed a replacement). As long as it runs linux I am a happy person.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
(Greyfox is pissed off that he still can't get an SMP AMD Motherboard and his perception is that it's Intel's fault.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Seriously... when your new motherboard doesn't recognize your FLOPPY DRIVE no matter which way you plug it in, and you take it back and buy a mobo made by someone else and the floppy works fine... that doesn't bode well for whoever made the dodgy motherboard. I've never spoken to anyone who felt anything but antipathy towards Via.
What we need to do is: make monopolies illegal, period. Patents to recoup investment? ok, but sell the shared patent rights to several competitors, full rights not licenses. Those companies would collectively collect all of the legitimate value of the patent away from substitute technologies, but would not be able to charge monopoly rents.
Hmm, maybe Intel is learning. When AMD came along offering a comperable (if not better) product at cheaper pricing, Intel ignored it and hoped it would go away. -BIG MISTAKE-. Now that VIA is doing the same thing, maybe Intel is figuring out that they should do something. Of course, trying to ban it may not be the best way...
kwsNI
While it maight be true that some instruction implementations are not the best possible, I would like to focus on the quality of it's chipsets. It's very difficult to check against SGI, Sun or Alpha chipsets, so I guess we are constrained to x86 comparison. And in that market, at least until BX they had the very best top of the line. If nothing else thay are the only ones who implement protocols flawlesslly. I mean, who could get an AGP to work perfectly on a VIA or ALi without disabling features (like X2 mode)? I had to switch to a Celeron when my k6 couldn't talk to my USB camera (BTW the Intel TX used it perfectly, but I needed 100Mhz FSB). No only that but their performance used to be stellar. Simply unreachable by the competitors. If you've seen benchmarks through Internet you'll see that the Apollo Pro with PC133 can't beat a BX with PC100. That's simply amazing. Until Intel launched the i740 they had the fastest, most compatible and flawless products. But then... i740 (horrid performance, no local memory texturing, though it was a high quality product), the first Celeron (16 Kb cache, horrid performante), the i810 (horrid performante and reliability issues), Rambus (questionable performance, outrageous cost, intent to corner the RAM market, the reason of all current problems), i810e (horrid performance), i820 (late, buggy, slow, expensive), Coppermine (late, buggy), i840 (expensive), SpeedStep (late), 800Mhz (vaporware) and the Itanium (brain dead, clumbsy, bloated, slow, expensive, late, late, late, etc.). So it may be true that the current offering is crap or dated (the venerable BX). But they have a history of delivering good products. Though I doubt they can keep up any longer
Why is Intel obsessed with doing the same thing IBM tried to do with PC clone manufacturers? Even if they win, they'll lose. The only way to compete is to stay ahead, and you can't do that if you're obsessing over where everyone else is.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Intels spat is that they licensed their patented technology to VIA. VIA made changes that Intel disputed, so apparently, Intel has terminated their license, which means that VIA no longer has a legal right to use Intels patents.
With the license terminated, Via has nothing to sell to another company, because that company would then be violating Intels patents and could therefore not ship into the US, unless something gets overturned.
This is the same reason that US based PKI products use either Diffie Hellman or aquire a license from RSA. They can't just use an RSA implementation that was developed overseas and sell it here, because that would still violate RSA's original patent.
Expect to see a HUGE battle over this one. Via definetly is the ballsiest company to cross Intel's path in ages.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
Intel strong armed ASUS for the move, not it appears it wants to strike at the source. More reason to use non-intel hardware if you ask me. My MB is a Fic VA-503+, via chipset and my CPU is an AMD K6-2/400. To hell with Intel!
-- DuckWing
"Intel sued Cyrix five times, and they never won," he said. "Intel--they just love lawsuits."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree. This is pure anti-competitive bullshit. Intel has never actually proven any IP violations by VIA, so they have no legitimate cause for banning import. I think the motivation for this could be that VIA is the main third party manufacturer for Athlon chipsets, as well as 133 Mhz Aluminummine chipsets. Intel likes to have a stranglehold on the high end of the market. If they can't win by competing fairly, they just try to cut off the supply of competitors' products.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
It seems very much like Intel are performing a few MS-like maneouvers of their own here. Obviously if a licensing agreement was made, then that should be enforceable, but to me it seems that they're just using that legal excuse (and corporate weight) to prevent competition.
Isn't that more or less what MS stand accused of doing??!
I mean, it would make sense if VIA, AMD and the like were producing inferior copies that harmed the reputation of the computer industry, holding back performance, or if they were using Intel's trademark, but they're not. They actually seem to be able to produce better product, faster and cheaper. Consumers and users aren't being harmed here, just Intel's profit margin.
Why is it that when big companies are outdone in the innovation field, they always resort to bring legal powers to bear on the smaller firms, thus harming the very innovation they're trying to promote. If Intel took this attitude 6 years ago, we'd probably be using 486's still!
If I were them, I'd stop spending all this money and lawsuits and spend SERIOUS amounts of money on R&D. They're just going to get left behind otherwise.
Just my opinion.......
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
They can't touch transmeta. Reason being that transmeta is having IBM fab the chips. IBM and Intel have a cross license that pretty much makes it possible for IBM to make an exact clone of a PIII chip and sell it. To ward off Anti-trust fears Intel did a number of these agreements with large vendors. The idea being that, while IBM has some of the best fab facilities in the world they can't d it as cheaply as Intel. And in this cut throat market nobody is going ot pay more for the CPU than they have to.
Most of the six law suits that Intel failed to prevail against Cryix were based on the fact that some of the production was fabed by IBM.
This brings up the interesting point of how much of a leg does VIA have to stand on? The VIA PR guy claims that Intel never won against Cryix so they aren't worried. But this case is different. I would wager that VIA's key point will be based on if the license agreement is really terminated because Intel said so?
On the bright site I would not be suprised to see the OEM's that via is sending chips to here in the states file with the court on behalf of VIA. They will get just as hurt as Via if Intel prevails.
Now that somebody has come along and actually started competing with them, they just can't handle. It makes me wonder the hell they're gonna try to do to transmeta!
Back in the early 1980's a new fad started in the US. People got their BS in engineering and went straight for an MBA. Then they graduated, and got directly onto the fast track. They never really worked in the trenches, at least not beyond some probationary period, and certainly not putting their heart into it.
Now these people are 'Captains of the industry', and you know what? They're not really comfortable with the underlying technology they're in charge of. They're much more comfortable with business.
As a result, technical competition has been fading during the '90s, and business competition has moved in. Companies don't want to get your business by producing the best products and giving the best service for the price. They want you to have to use their products and services, at their price, because there is no other choice.
This is really what Linux is about. Frustrated tekkies who want to do their best, but are barred by 'business concerns' into mediocre solutions. It began with software, because there was already some appropriate history there, and it is cheap to enter and build on that history. It will be interesting to see where else the paradigm works.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
For ages they've just had terrible designs of their chips. You can actually write software replacements for many of their opcodes that exactly duplicate the function of an opcode but run faster.
I remember that on the original Pentium, it was faster to implement a bit scan (first bit set from one edge) with shifts and masks than to use the BSR or BSL opcodes. Not in some clever way either, but just a standard binary search. This elementary problem could be done by a bright second year engineering student to work in one or two cycles with maybe a hundred gates.
There's just no excuse for that. It's not hard to to implement an opcode so that it just runs a sequence of other opcodes, and it wouldn't have taken much surface at all to be able to bitscan in one cycle.
Say what you like about the quality of Intel products, but their attitude is appalling. They signed a deal with VIA to deflect the monopoly investigation they were under, and then they got pissed off because VIA made a better chipset.
This basically says that Intel wants a monopoly on chipsets. If this injunction is granted, then they will have succeeded in their aims. I think that the Federal Trade Commission should be called in to reinvestigate Intel _because_ of their behaviour towards competitors.
It is fair to be competitive, but not to be monopolistic, and then cover that up by licensing their chipset to a competitor so they can say, "look, we are good boys, we allow comptetition" and then rescind the license a few months later when they aren't being investigated.
Luckily this won't affect the AMD chipsets, so expect to see even more choice in Athlon chipsets soon.
I don't like bully-boy corporations. Lack of competition means less innovation in the market. Intel has a huge share of the chipset and motherboard market as it is.
I doubt that the companies using VIA chipsets (Compaq et al) will be too happy. Expect them to react and go 100% Athlon if this attempt to ban VIA works. If they cave into Intel and switch to Intel chipsets then I have no respect for them! :-)
~~
You know, they used to be much more subtle in their maneuvering, basically when the competition was so inept that they couldn't find their own asses. Now that AMD finally has a winner (Athlon) and they're getting better than expected earnings (high expected was ~26 cents/share, turns out to be more like 46) Intel's starting to get desperate.
Despite the spread of the Athlon, VIA's bread and butter in the PC industry is still the P6/PPro/P2/Celeron/whatever it's called this week market. Intel is trying to strangle all the competitors out of this market - witness the copyrighted P6 bus preventing competitors from breaking into Intel's market...
InThane
Slashdot poster 'kinesis' has said he will no longer allow the import of any Intel products into his apartment and that he will sue any and all parties necessary to enforce the import ban.
In a prepared statement, kinesis said, "Those guys suck!"
An approximately 960 square foot area of Northern California is affected by the ban.