Intel: Don't use Via P4 chipset

RoofusPennymore writes "Intel is warning not to use the Via chipset that lets the P4 use DDR SDRAM."

Comments

No problem Intel,

[Drakantus]

I'll use an AMD chipset instead, and build a dual AthlonMP system.

Re:No problem Intel,

[jgrumbles]

No doubt man, with ya there.

But to stay on topic, how in the holy hell does VIA plan on getting away with this? Give Intel the silent treatment? Fortify their headquarters from the Fed? Not to mention that DDR RAM can still rip a person a new asshole.

*can't wait to order his ABit KG7-Raid and AYHJA Stepping TBird*

Re:No problem Intel,

[Drakantus]

As the story goes, when VIA purchased S3 they also acquired all the IP they need to legally produce chipsets for any intel CPU in the next so many years. Intel doesn't have much of a case.

Re:No problem Intel,

[Dancin_Santa]

Could it be possible that the Intel-S3 licensing agreement barred the transfer of IP rights?

Does anyone know?

Dancin Santa

Re:No problem Intel,

[glitch!]

Not to mention that DDR RAM can still rip a person a new asshole.

Both SDRAM and DDR are dirt cheap these days. From www.crucial.com:

256 megs DDR module, $38 ($42 for ECC)
256 megs SDRAM module CAS3, $36 (add $2 for CAS2)
256 megs SDRAM module ECC, CAS2, $40

Shipping is often free (it is right now).

This is for a good brand with good warranty, too.

Re:No problem Intel,

[jgrumbles]

Check that, I mean RDRAM. I am a very PRO-DDR RAM person. My apologies.

To prove my point this time, cheapest I found RDRAM for a 256MB chip was $81.

Re:No problem Intel,

[jgrumbles]

Also note my anxiety for the KG7-RAID (AMD 760 chipset) and overall support of AMD.

Re:No problem Intel,

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the case, expect to see this chipset produced by "S3, a wholly owned subsidiary of VIA." Thus, no transfer of "intellectual property" will be considered to have taken place.

~~~

Re:No problem Intel,

[High Elf Pyrion]

Yup, seeing similar prices everywhere, but I'm rather happy with the deal I found last week...

512 megs SDRAM module CAS3, $50.

Re:No problem Intel,

[mgblst]

ok, you make sure you keep that a secret... wouldnt be any good you actually naming where you got it from would it???

Surprised

[Goldberg's Pants]

Don't use Intel. Always good advice.

Not licensed?

[kiscica]

'Not licensed to build products that are compatible with the Pentium 4'?

<br><br>

Well, maybe, but I don't see how they could be legally prevented from doing so.

<br><br>

kiscica

Re:Judaism

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, we'll get you all the help you obviously need.

Why bother with a P4?

[MasterOfDisaster]

I don't understand why anyone would bother with a P4, ESPECALY with slower ram. I'll take an Athlon and DDR (or pc133) system any day of the week. P4's are slow, power hungry, hot, etc. whereas athlongs are...oh wait, all the same things. never mind

Re:Why bother with a P4?

[klui]

I have an AMD system and am relatively happy with it. But I wish AMD would include: a heat spreader for better dissipation of heat/prevent cracking the core when installing heatsinks; and thermal protection. One of these days, I'm going to come home and find my CPU has fried because my CPU fan has failed. My A7V's latest 1008 BIOS has fan/CPU temperature protection, but both features don't work right. Fan monitor thinks my 80mm fan is spinning too slow and makes the annoying alert sound; temp monitor is just broken and shuts down the box right after it is turned on. Consuming less wattage would be a nice feature, too. Can't wait for 0.13u.

Well I'll be...

[kypper]

Intel Corp. (INTC - news), in its ongoing dispute with Via Technologies Inc., of Taiwan, is warning computer makers to steer clear of a new chip set from Via that could enable the manufacturers to build cheaper Pentium 4-based PCs by enabling them to use a less costly high-speed memory technology.

...you mean someone will finally pay what this bs chip is worth? What a shame that'll be!

Via and AMD certainly aren't having the same problems.

Re:Well I'll be...

[NonSequor]

I've already seen an ad for a $1000 P4 machine. There should be laws against things like that. They have used extra-cheap hardware to get it down to $1000 but they can still advertize it as using Intel's shiny new processor. I'm sure they'll make tons of money off of it.

Re:Well I'll be...

[icantremember]

There's no way that ANY big PC manufacturer will use anything that Intel tells them not to, or they'll ruin their business relationship with Intel.
The only people that will benefit/be-hurt-by this is those of us that buy components and Roll Our Own...

mike

Aww crud, and I was...

[joshyboy]

...looking forward to replacing my ultra clocked duron which has given me nothing but joy for next to nothing money-wise, with one of the crap Intel's trying to push, claiming it's a 'processor'.

I forget where I read it, but no doubt it spawned from a link here, but the last 3 chips Intel has made have been a) massively overpriced for the power, and b) the same chip. :P

Re:Aww crud, and I was...

[krogoth]

You think the P4 is expensive? Unlike the Itaniums with range from over 1000$ to over 4000$ each?

Re:Aww crud, and I was...

[joshyboy]

Yup..and for what purpose? You can achieve pretty well the same power with a nice, inexpensive socket A (prices as low as $110 Canuck dollaws) and a Duron or preferably T-bird.

From a builder's standpoint, you'd ask 'Why do they even bother making chips.' But the problem is the public knows about Intel. That's the company that has the neat sticker on my computer, and has those strange blue men in their commercials. The public likes Intel, and probably haven't even heard of the viable competitors.

Re:Aww crud, and I was...

[spectral]

The PPro, P2, Celeron, P3, and varities of each have been essentially the same chip. The P4 is a new model.

Re:Aww crud, and I was...

[spectral]

People are wowed by gigahertz and press releases. More so by ghz. Intel's leading there, though we all know it means crap. However, with the Itanium, it's a new model, 64-bit processor. That breaks compatibility with everything else, so everything need to bre recompiled. This isn't so bad, for open source applications. Most Open Source OS's support IA-64, and the compilers can build for it. However, good luck seeing windows on any of these until XP comes out. If it does. Then you'll have to convince closed source people to recompile. Much harder. Of course, it's meant to be a server chip, so maybe all people writing server software for windows will recompile. Yea. Sure.

I just wanted to set you straight, that's the purpose, is the 64bit computing, and insane registers and EPIC and stuff like that. I think Sledgehammer will be a better solution though.

Re:Aww crud, and I was...

[chrylis]

People are wowed by gigahertz and press releases. More so by ghz. Intel's leading there, though we all know it means crap.

Amen, brother...

However, with the Itanium, it's a new model, 64-bit processor. That breaks compatibility with everything else, so everything need to bre recompiled.

No, Itanium isn't backward-compatible, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be. Any of Sun's 64-bit UltraSPARCs can run any program compiled for a 32-bit SPARC machine just fine. And if you're looking for a 64-bit machine--or any server, for that matter--why not just get a Sun? These days, they cost about the same as comparably-performing Intels; the UltraSPARC is a better-designed, more scalable, and more reliable processor (no bugs at all... contrast Intel's microcode workarounds); and Solaris even runs GNOME <g>.

Oh, and by the way... AFAIK, the Itanium will run well with at the most 32 processors (at least that's what XP Datacenter or whatever it's called is supposed to support). An E10k setup can run one image on 1024 processors...

Re:Aww crud, and I was...

[krogoth]

Oh, so now it costs 4000$ to break everything :)

I think that will be a major advantage of the hammers, but I hope they are overall better than itaniums (although they will have the disadvantage of coming out later).

Intel shouldn't do this...

[krogoth]

I take it their main product aimed at desktop systems is CPUs, not chipsets. Right now they are trying to cut their CPU off from another part of the market so they can sell more chipsets later - reducing the sales of their main product for the benefit of a secondary product.

Re:Intel shouldn't do this...

[Billly Gates]

Actually rambus practically gave away a billion dollars worth of stocks to Intel to close the deal on the upcoming p4. This is why they only want rambus to succeed. If rambus price gouges, Intel would actually see a profit regardless if less p4's sold. IT was a memory monopoly guaranteed until AMD came out of nowhere and now there is competition.

Re:Intel shouldn't do this...

[Aphelion]

It took the Pentium III about a year to become attractive anyway. Especialy with the economic downturn, the Pentium IV should not by itself become attractive before February 2002, the scheduled release for Intel's own DDR chipset (remember, it's more likely in this industry that deadlines are moved forward, not backward. So maybe Via beat Intel out by a mere month.)

Via won't hand over half their profits over to Intel because they claim that in their acquisition of S3, they also inherited the license to the bus allowing them to interface with the P4. Seeing as how Intel is a public company, their sidestepping suing Via suggests they reluctantly agree with them.

Re:Intel shouldn't do this...

[mgblst]

Its funny what competition can do, imagine the world without AMD, how much more people would be paying for their computers. Now imagine a world where microsoft had some real competition!

Of course they are..

[XaXXon]

Of course Intel is going to tell computer manufacturers not to use the other guy's chipset. And the reason? Not because it isn't compatible, or isn't as fast as the Intel alternative, but because Intel will sue them if they do. Because Intel can't/won't put out a chipset that people want to use (only offering RDRAM or old and slow PC133), they sure as hell don't want someone else doing it. With how poorly the P4 is doing, however, you'd think Intel would be happy to have something out there to move more chips..

Re:Of course they are..

[Drakantus]

Unfortunatly for Intel, VIA acquired all the IP it needs to produce a P4 chipset from it's purchase of S3. VIA isn't afraid of a lawsuit, and I doubt Intel will actually go through with a suit when VIA call's their bluff.

Re:Of course they are..

[VAXman]

There's a fatal flaw in your assessment; Intel has licensed the P4 bus to both ALi and SiS and both are releasing DDR chipsets within the next month. The problem is not that Intel doesn't want others producing chipsets, it's that it doesn't want people producing chipsets without a bus license. There's really nothing more to this than what the headline says.

Re:Of course they are..

[norton_I]

Supposedly there is some ambiguity in exactly what VIA aquired with S3. I expect that VIA scrunitized the agreement extremely carefully, and has to be pretty confident that Intel would lose in court, but if there is any ambiguity, Intel could conceivable get a restraining order and slow them down a while.

At least one claim was that the S3 licensing agreement only applies do graphics chips and/or chipsets with integrated graphics.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this works out. My guess is that Intel is trying to stall this until their SDRAM chipset comes out, and doesn't expect/plan to kill it off entirely. Perhaps there will be some midnight licensing deal where Intel accepts much lower royalties than they had originally asked for (something like $20+/chipset) -- that would open up the market and speed P4 acceptence, while still saving face for Intel, and not set any dangerous (to Intel) precedents about enforcing patents.

Intel Just Jealous

[robbyjo]

Because they can't outperform Via. Thus... just like their partner, Rambus, counter attack with lawsuit. What a classic. Meanwhile, Via has a very strong case, too.

Some bits here and here at Anandtech, and there is another one at Hardware Central. Then, here and here at Tom's Hardware.

All says: Via Rocks, Intel sucks. I'll leave it to you to judge.

Re:Intel Just Jealous

[VAXman]

Because they can't outperform Via

Uh, have you actually looked at the Anandtech article about the Via P4/DDR chipset? Intel's i850 (RDRAM) chipset outpferoms Via's DDR chipset on every benchmark.

Re:Intel Just Jealous

[cygnusx]

It's gonna become tougher to dupe some poor sod into clicking a goatse link now that Banjo's got this way-cool domain-printing feature. :-) (But only if you don't disable it!)

Re:Intel Just Jealous

[necrognome]

Not to mention the fact that intel is run by dancing blue aliens.

Re:Intel Just Jealous

[juhaz]

Well, it didn't in AquaMark.

Not that it matters, VIA chipset is close enough in performance, so considerable lower prices of DDR SDRAM and probably the chipset itself in comparison to i850 and RDRAM give it quite a bit better price/speed ratio - as usual.

Re:Intel Just Jealous

[WNight]

Sure, their RDRAM chipset, using ram that was three times the price, was 5% (on average) ahead on all benchmarks except Q3, where it was 12% or so ahead...

Their SDRAM chipset was 20% or so behind VIA's chipset in almost all of the benchmarks, except where it fell farther behind.

So no, Intel's SDRAM chipset can't stay anywhere near VIA's SDRAM chipset. In fact, Intel's chipset fell farther behind than would be expected from ram bandwidth itself, leading to speculation that they intentionally crippled the chipset, so as to not take away sales from the more expensive product. (They've frequently done this, 486SX, Celeron 2, etc)

Face it, Intel currently has the slowest chipsets, and the slowest CPUs. The fastest x86 out there is an Athlon 1400 with DDR.

They tried this same vaguely threatened lawsuit trick against mobo makers when they were first coming out with Athlon boards. Intel and MS, can't compete with products, have to do it in court.

Microsoft Says Do Not Use Linux

[docstrange]

Because it is counterproductive to their business plan.

..............sigh

Go ahead.

[eric2hill]

Buy the VIA chipset. You should jump on it quick though. In a month or two, VIA will be so buried in legal paperwork that they won't be able to put a resistor in a box without a court injunction. It's really too bad that Intel can't let this slide, but I'm guessing that Intel and Rambus(t) have been in bed together so long that someone forgot where the key to the handcuffs is. Some Intel CPO woke up one day to find himself gagged and bent over a box, and his lawyers told him they couldn't do anything, but that they'd take some pictures to remind him in the future that KY and a condem aren't all that's needed in the corporate world.
</speculation>

Clarification

[kiscica]

By which I mean, 'could be prevented from doing so solely by taking legal measures'. Obviously, they could be obstructed if Intel refused to release some necessary technical information to them, and that would be perfectly legal for Intel to do, but if Via has already come into possession of all the necessary information by legal means (i.e. publicly available specs, or reverse engineering) then they can build all they like. Which means that computer companies should feel free to use their chipsets, as long as they haven't signed any agreement with Intel not to use unlicensed products. I can't see that Intel would have any grounds to sue Via unless an actual agreement were violated.

By the way, HTML preview seems to be broken now.

kiscica

Re:Clarification

[Your Anus]

If Intel patented some key part of the technology, like the CPU socket (think Slot 1 & 2), or the north bridge, then Intel would make it impossible, or extremely difficult, for VIA to produce a compatible chipset without Intel's permission.

That being said, I think this is a really stupid move on Intel's part, The only reason they would be doing it is because of some agreement they still have with Rambus.

Re:Clarification

[Telek]

That and the fact that VIA has been pissing on Intel for years now, constantly annoying them, and now they're embarassing Intel again (on many counts, Rambus was an admitted large embarassment, and Intel has had enough embarassing things happen in the last year or so) by beating them to the market with a better solution for their flagship processor. Pretty easy to understand why Intel would be Up In Arms(tm) about this.

BTW - HTML Preview works fine, it's just that the dropdown defaults to "pain text" now, so you have to change it to HTML formatted.

Boo hoo

[TroyFoley]

"Intel claims that Via does not have the necessary licensing for its Apollo P4X266 chip set."

Oh no, somebody call the WAAAAAHHHHHmbulance.

A couple thoughts

[Brad Wilson]

First, to those who wonder exactly how it is that Intel can limit things that interface with the P4... they use patents to prevent it. By patenting the interface into the P4, nobody can use it without licensing the patent.

Second, I wouldn't believe either side yet. Lawyers have a tendency to slightly over-react. If motherboards come out and you get one, don't worry about it. You won't be liable for using the supposed "renegade" technology. Of course, IANAL, so everything I said was a lie. :) :)

3 boxes in my home office. All Athlons. I don't dislike Intel; I just dislike Intel's pricing.

Re:A couple thoughts

[ShoeHead]

Of course, IANAL, so everything I said was a lie

... I am not a lawyer, so everything I said was a lie... wow, that's a ironic.

Re:A couple thoughts

[Brad Wilson]

... I am not a lawyer, so everything I said was a lie... wow, that's a ironic.

Yeah, well, what can I say? The smileys were in place. :)

Yeah, sue them!

[gloth]

Oh my god, VIA is releasing a chipset that might help to bring our overpriced Intel systems a little bit closer to AMD! We can't let that pass, let's slap those suckers silly! If you want Intel, we'll make you pay...

I don't get it...

[Judg3]

Intel plans on releasing a chipset that supports DDR DRAM within a month or so ANYWAY, so whats the point of this fight? Does Intel make MORE money licensing the chipsets that use their processors then the processors themselves?
To me, at least, I think it's just that Intel got a little egg on their face and is now trying to use their muscle to halt it.

Re:I don't get it...

[kisielk]

Correction... according to the article this story links to, Intel's DDR chipset is not due till early next year. The several months advantage VIA has could seriously hurt sales of Intel motherboards and chipsets, since the VIA chipset is cheaper and allows the manufacturing of cheaper systems due to the price difference between DDR and Rambus memory.

The chipset Intel is planning on releasing this year is one that uses standard SDRAM, which, IMO is total BS as the whole P4 architecture relies on high memory bandwidth, which standard SDRAM cannot provide. With SDRAM, Pentium 4's are not likely to perform any better than lower-clocked P3's.

Re:I don't get it...

[tshak]

Intel plans on releasing a chipset that supports DDR DRAM within a month or so ANYWAY, so whats the point of this fight? Does Intel make MORE money licensing the chipsets that use their processors then the processors themselves?
To me, at least, I think it's just that Intel got a little egg on their face and is now trying to use their muscle to halt it.


PLEASE read the article! The issue has nothing to do with the speed of DDR SDRAM, it has to do with the fact that VIA supposedly doesn't have the proper licensing from Intel, and there could be legal battles. This is a purely legal/business issue, not a technical one.

Re:I don't get it...

[Drakantus]

The real issue is this: intel can't controll VIA, and the P4X266 chipset shows decent performance. This screws up intel's original plan: release i845 with SDR ram support, with poor performance. Later add DDR support, but artificially cripple the chipset so it still performs poorly. Then, say "we told you so, RAMBUS RAM is the only way to get good performance with the processors of the future, look we tried DDR and it still sucks, so you just have to pay the extra and use RDRAM".

Re:I don't get it...

[Judg3]

I did read the article. I saw this as a boom for Intel, seeing as there was already a chipset out there now that supports DDR SDRAM (Did misinterpet what Intel was releasing, didnt realize they were just support SDRAM). I say just let VIA sell the chipset. More P4 motherboards that can use DDR SDRAM, the more Pentium 4's out the door. Both companies win, and we win as consumers for having a P4 that will run the sub-1000 barrier. I guess I'm more the "Can't we all get along" kind of guy. *shrug*

Re:I don't get it...

[spectral]

Most P4 speeds already don't perform any better than lower-clocked P3's. remember when they came out and the 1GHz P3 spanked a 1.4GHz P4 and often a 1.5GHz one too? And then they benchmarked the Athlon against it and then re-benched.. and benched again.. and again.. and always the same results.. that the P4 just plain sucks. At 1.4GHz, the Athlon should easily take on the 1.7GHz P4. or 1.8.. or whatever the hell marketing says it's at today. We know those numbers mean crap anyway.

With SDR SDRAM, the P4 is essentially useless. I have no idea why Intel is bothering to make it use this. Especially before the DDR ones. MAYBE at the same time, for people who want P4 for no reason other than marketing and bragging rights (who needs to know what kind of ram you have), but certainly don't release it beforehand.. ugh.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic? OFFTOPIC?!?!? If anything, that was a troll, plain and simple. It's not offtopic because it is about the topic at hand...idiot moderators.

I find it sad

[VFVTHUNTER]

that less than a week after the IBM/PC 20th anniversary, celebrating the "open-sourcing" of PC specifications and such, that Intel is pulling such bullshit.

I want open source software and hardware. I don't expect them to release the silicon schematics, but I at the very least expect them to give enough information to let me hack away at it (remember IBM's purple book?), free of the sort of "licensing" that they seem to be pushing onto people.

And the "warning to potential buyers of potential legal action" reeks of (take your pick) M$/RIAA/MPAA.

Time to boycott Intel.

Re:I find it sad

[willfe]

Time to boycott Intel.

Agreed. And in this case, it's actually possible to boycott them without sawing off one's own nose to spite one's face :)

AMD have consistently made cheaper products than Intel, and for the past few years, they've made better products than Intel as well. When you can buy a CPU that performs better than Intel's offerings and costs less, it's hard not to boycott Intel.

I've owned AMD-based PCs and I've seen plenty of benchmarks. I know benchmarks get skewed in whichever direction the reviewer wants them to go, but my own experience tells me the K7 (Athlon, if you insist on brand names :) is faster clock-for-clock than Intel's best, and it's always cheaper.

Re:I find it sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, except that Intel's chipsets generally *work* and AMD/VIA's do not. (And to prove me wrong, show me a video capture card that doesn't have 'VIA is not supported' disclaimers all over it.)

I'd love to buy an AMD-based system, but I have other things to stick into it than just a GeForce card (and even those have issues).

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but at the speeds the P4 currently runs at there isn't any tangible increase in speed. At least not enough to justify the price premium that it commands.

Fine with me.

[norculf]

I prefer to use chipsets from the same company that made the CPU*. Intel chipsets with Intel CPUs, and AMD chipsets with AMD CPUs.

Anyway, we can't have Intel based systems be price competitive with AMD based systems, can we now.

*Yeah, that's a mostly unfounded prejudice.

Re:Fine with me.

[norculf]

Thats offtopic, I belive.

Banjo Bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

Banjo has seemed to stripped the end of this article off

License to be compatible?

[Frater 219]

Just to clarify the headline: Intel is not "warning" people that using the VIA chipset is dangerous -- that it might harm their Pentium 4 processors -- but rather that they wish it were illegal. A quote from the article:

"They are not licensed to sell products that are compatible with the Pentium 4," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.

Mr. Malloy and his superiors apparently believe that they have "intellectual property" not only in their patents, but also in devices they may have never seen which interoperate with their patents. I believe that this idea was settled in Nintendo v. Galoob, the "Game Genie" case, in which Galoob's right to create a device that interoperated with the NES game console (and which modified the behavior of the latter, no less!) was upheld.

Re:License to be compatible?

[cookd]

Except that I don't think Galoob obtained their information about how to interoperate with the NES under a contractual agreement with Nintendo. Via made certain agreements with Intel, in which it received information from Intel, and agreed to certain restrictions about how it could use that information. The question is whether Via's licensing agreement allows them to sell these products. I personally hope they can, but I can see some reasons why they might get caught in court for a while.

Re:License to be compatible?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nintendo thing was a pure case of reverse engineering, where VIA certainly is not.

Even so, the Nintendo case was tried on copyright law (because the Game Genie modified Nintendo's copyrighted games). As the other guy pointed out, this is a contract case, and absofuckinglutely has nothing to do with that Nintendo case. It's nice that a irrelevant hyperlink still gets a Score 5 around here though.

simplest solution..

[CEHT]

If I can only buy a new Intel P4 computer with the RDRAM, then I guess the simplest solution is to buy myself a Dual Athlon 1.4 GHz + DDR Ram computer. It is probably cheaper too.

What a surprise!

[Dwonis]

A VIA chipset that sucks! Now that surprises me!
</sarcasm>

Should be safe to ignore

[BlowCat]

I could not find any technical arguments in the Intel's statement. It's a legal problem between VIA and Intel. It should be safe to ignore this warning. I doubt that Intel can sue users of VIA motherboards.

What a joke...

[GLX]

C'mon AMD, GPL your chipset! That'll guarantee at least some of us will convert :-)

Saying that Via needs to have a license to hook into a chip that's released into the public domain is like saying that I need a license from Volkswagen to drive their car, or moreso to change the oil in their car. Rediculous.

Re:What a joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

What, so RMS can rape AMD up the ass like they did glibc?

Intel and Playing Hardball?

[ackthpt]

And we just finished all this dirty laundry of Microsoft today, too. Intel is worried that you may not have the same quality chipset, since VIA wants to do things their own way, and hasn't waited for Intel's blessing. What it really comes down to is that Via is the big dog, in Taiwan, and has tired of kowtowing to the Santa Clara based company. Intel has licensing arrangements with smaller competitors of Via, in Taiwan, and is probably just trying to extort enough money to level the playing field, as the Via chipset is a few dollars cheaper than the Intel sanctioned sets.

I'd give Via the benefit of the doubt, considering that Intel is still flapping their gums about how good RDRAM is, even after Craig Barrett put Rambus down.

Meanwhile, Rambus failure to overturn on appeal the SDRAM fraud charge is blowing up in their face with a slough of shareholder class action suits.

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[VAXman]

Mainly for cost. DDR is cheaper than RDRAM, and Intel wants to push the P4 into sub-$800 systems. It can achieve this with SDR (which is much lower performance than DDR) but not with RDRAM (at least not with today's prices). Hopefully, Rambus will go out of business so people can build RDRAM without having to pay royalty. RDRAM is much more scalable than DDR, and should theoretically be heaper (due to muh lower pin count). Note that Intel will continue to develop RDRAM chipsets for customers who need optimal performance.

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[Dancin_Santa]

Hopefully, Rambus will go out of business so people can build RDRAM without having to pay royalty

IANAL, but it seems to me that as long as RDRAM is covered by patents, Rambus will get a piece of the pie.

Dancin Santa

Bad move by Intel

[AnotherBrian]

The way I see it is that they'll sell more P4s if people can use the cheeper DDR RAM. This is the main reason I don't have one. I reacently upgraded the guts of my old computer from a 600Mhz Athalon w/SDRAM to a 1.2 Ghz Athalon + DDR. What I was really wanting was the DDR RAM and it was worth it. I would have gone with a P4, but I'm not going to spend all that extra $ on memory that won't be around for long. Intel lost my biz when they hooked up with RD RAM.

On another note:
"They are not licensed to sell products that are compatible with the Pentium 4," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.
Sense when can they do this? If I want to make and sell intake manifolds I suer hope there is'nt some fucked up law that forces me to get ford's premission first.

Warning: My competitors eat boogers!

[gnovos]

Wow, how desperate do you have to be to actually warn against a competitor by name and tell your customers not to chose them. What ever happened to advertising your products strengths as opposed to your opponents weaknesses?

Now, I am not going to say anything about Intel's products, but it is REALLY grasping a straws when the only ammunition you have is whining to your clients that your cheaper, quicker, and more savvy competition may not have it's licensing in order...

Re:Warning: My competitors eat boogers!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Wow, how desperate do you have to be to actually warn against a competitor by name and tell your customers not to chose them. What ever happened to advertising your products strengths as opposed to your opponents weaknesses?

Well, at least this is confined to Intel. Because obviously Microsoft would never use these tactics to put down Linux, oh no... ;-)

Re:Warning: My competitors eat boogers!

[cpeterso]

Microsoft would never use these tactics to put down Linux, oh no

or vice versa. Linux users would never put down Microsoft's weaknesses instead of promoting Linux's strengths.

Re:Warning: My competitors eat boogers!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

or vice versa. Linux users would never put down Microsoft's weaknesses instead of promoting Linux's strengths.

Obviously. They have whole websites where people just discuss the finer points of Linux, y'know.

Better call the BSA

[hammock]

*BSA storms into business with a warrant*

"Do you have licenses for these Pentium 4 chipsets?"

"Licenses for my hardware??"

"I can offer you a Pentium 4 site license for 20% off right now, or I take you and all your employees to pound-me-in-the-ass prison."

What did you expect?

[Kazymyr]

Oh come on, VIA is competition for them what did you think they would say? "Go buy it, we'll be happy if you do so instead of buying ours"? It would be ludicrous, just as, say, Microsoft advising you to buy RedHat.

The nature of Intel's relationship with Rambus

[hillct]

Memory has been comoditized for over a decade. The only way for memory producers to make money is to produce faster memory, by either developing or adopting new standards. Having said this, why does Intel care? Do they have an equity stake in Rambus? Do they have agreement that require exclusive use of Rambus technologies?

Re:The nature of Intel's relationship with Rambus

[Dancin_Santa]

It sounds more like they don't want Via making any money off the new chipset. According to the article Intel is planning on releasing an SDRAM chipset next month and a DDR-SDRAM chipset next year.

Dancin Santa

Re:The nature of Intel's relationship with Rambus

[Grishnakh]

Intel has a contract with Rambus that if they sell a certain number of Rambus-requiring chipsets by a certain date, they get a huge pile of Rambus stock. Intel wants to push Rambus crap down their customers' throats whether they want it or not. One of Intel's Values that they give so much lip service to is "Customer Orientation". But in reality, Intel doesn't care at all about its customers, only that it can control them and milk them for extra profits.

Re:The nature of Intel's relationship with Rambus

[klui]

The test on anandtech shows Intel's 845 chipset is intentionally crippled. Intel probably don't want people to say/think "Gee, your SDRAM chipset has latency as bad as DRDRAM and yet VIA's chipset has better latency; with performance within 5%, and a lot less $ investment using DDR SDRAM, I will buy the VIA product instead of yours."

Re:The nature of Intel's relationship with Rambus

[Anonymous Coward]

You're misinterpreting the words "customer orientation". It doesn't mean the same thing as "customer oriented". "Customer oriented" means giving the customer what is best for him.

Customer orientation, on the other hand, is exactly what they are doing here. Orienting people such that they irrationally fear VIA products and prefer Rambus products. In other words, "customer orientation" == "brainwashing". Tell a lie long enough and people think it is true...

Re:The nature of Intel's relationship with Rambus

[unitron]

"Intel has a contract with Rambus that if they sell a certain number of Rambus-requiring chipsets by a certain date, they get a huge pile of Rambus stock."

And the only way that Rambus stock certificates will be worth more than their scrap paper value is if Intel can create a situation where people have to buy Rambus memory from no one but Rambus at whatever price Rambus wants to charge.

Of course if enough people decide that they can get the same performance with AMD and regular DIMMs for less money or more preformance for the same money then Intel and Rambus could both be out of luck. However with most people getting their CPU buying advice from Blue Man Group or the Bunny People, it'll take a lot of work (i.e., expensive advertising) by AMD and/or a "known name" box maker like Compaq, Dell, Gateway, or IBM to educate the masses enough to really put the screws to Intel and Rambus.

This is just a friendly warning

[TFloore]

"If you make a product that uses VIA's chipset, and we sue them for patent infringement, it is possible your motherboard could be blocked from import into the US as a result of the suit. You might want to re-think your decision."

Really, this is just Intel being a nice corporate citizen and warning other companies of a possible downside they could have neglected to consider.

Don't you like it when companies are so helpful?

Just Another Point of View...

[bullitB]

Yes, I know exactly what everyone is thinking. Intel is runing their FUD engine at full steam to make sure everyone uses their expensive chipset/RDRAM setup.

But, as someone whose last three out of four computers (and probably next one) have been AMD Athl/Dur-on computers, let me just give a slightly different twist on this. I have had HUGE problems with VIA chipsets, on both AMD and Intel platforms. Quite frankly, they are just not quality products. They have ridiculously bad USB support, sub-par stability, and tons of other little things that drive me NUTS.

I would also like to point out that unlike many other chipset makers, VIA specifically optimizes their chipsets' drivers for Microsoft OS use. Generally speaking, this means that you always have to use the absolute latest Linux kernel in order for even somewhat good chipset support.

Given VIA's track record, Intel's advice seems completely logical: VIA cares more about getting a chipset out than making sure it's a quality product.

In other words, if you're in the market for a P4/DDR combo, I implore you to wait for Intel, SiS, or ALi to release their chipsets, as VIA's track record (particularly in new techologies) is...less than great.

Just another stupid move

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

Let's see now...

The Pentium FPU error recall debacle.

The PII/PIII serial number "Big Brother Inside" disaster.

And now this. And never mind the fact that, when you buy Intel, you get the honor of paying more for less performance. What a joke. Has it never occurred to these corporate idiots that they're losing market share?

And in case anyone from Intel is reading this... Hey guys, there's a reason your numbers are declining: many people don't find your products competitive anymore. You might have been able to get away with such tactics five years ago, but not anymore. I'm running a K6-II right now, and if there was ever a miniscule chance that I'd have purchased an Intel chip in the future or even recommended one to someone else, it's gone now.

Re:Just another stupid move

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting some fresh air instead of hanging around in your mom's basement hating the world.

... Hey guys, there's a reason your numbers are declining

Except that Intel's market share is going up, and AMD's is dropping

I'm running a K6-II right now

Oh, you're running a low end CPU from 3 years ago. You really sound like the market that Intel is worried about. Oh no! Intel has peed-off a member of the Super Socket Seven pricewatch crowd. They're going down!!!

Re:Just another stupid move

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

OK Mr. Troll, we see you. Now crawl back under your rock.

But I just have to ask. What do you find wrong with a K6-II, especially considering the fact that I bought it when it was the fastest chip out there? It does the job, so I don't feel the need to upgrade every six months just to spend money. And when I do upgrade, I'll be getting a Thunderbird, which, if I'm not mistaken, is exactly the market Intel is after. But since you never bothered to consider these things, you wouldn't have known, now would you?

There's history here.

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

It's astonishing how an article could spend that long talking about Intel suing VIA over a chipset which introduces a new DRAM type to an Intel CPU and not mention Intel's PC133 fiasco of two years ago.

For those who don't know, the only reason PC133 exists (as a PC standard DRAM type) is because of VIA. Flashback to early 1999: Intel had the market for chipsets (for Intel processors) almost completely to itself, riding on the enormously successful 440BX chipset, which used PC100. However, P3 speeds were ramping up while memory speeds had been stuck at PC100 for a couple years. The obvious thing to do was to update the BX to support a 133MHz FSB. After all, it was a dead-simple engineering trick (every BX mobo at the time could easily overclock to 133; many were stable up to 150), and the memory makers were already making SDRAM which could safely run at 133 but clocking at 100 because that was the highest official speed.

But instead--and unbeknownst to most of the techie world at that point--Intel had a contract with Rambus which offered them many goodies like the ability to make RDRAM controllers royalty-free (others paid up to 5%) and lots and lots of stock options. However, the contract was contingent on, among other things, Intel agreeing to do everything reasonably in their power to prevent "next-generation DRAM" types other than RDRAM from being paired with Intel processors for the consumer desktop. "Next-generation" was defined as > 1GB/s bandwidth.

PC133 has a bandwidth of 1.066 GB/s.

Moreover, Intel *thought* it was putting the finishing touches on the ill-fated RDRAM-only (at that point) i820 (Camino) chipset, with which they were going to introduce new and badly needed 133MHz FSB P3s. Instead, engineering delays involving the difficulties of getting RDRAM working (eventually they had to settle for only 2 RIMM slots instead of the original 3, a per-channel limitation which remains to this day), and the difficulties of getting a memory translator hub which allowed PC100 to be used on the i820 (a last minute addition when they realized people weren't exactly going to pay $500 for 128MB of RAM) working, pushed the release date back 6 months or so, until November.

Just to reiterate: Intel put off releasing 133MHz FSB P3s, and then when they did release them said that consumers could only use them with a buggy chipset, limited to 2 RAM slots, which offered one's choice of an extra-slow translated implementation of PC100 or of RDRAM which cost 10 times as much per bit as SDRAM. Meanwhile, tests with BX chipsets overclocked to 133 MHz FSB showed that this solution was significantly *faster* than the i820 + RDRAM chipset!

Into this world stepped VIA offering the Apollo133 chipset, the first P3 chipset explicitly designed to use PC133. Nevermind that it was probably *less* stable than an Intel BX overclocked to 133 MHZ FSB. Nevermind that it underperformed the BX@133 as well. And nevermind that then, as now, Intel sued VIA with all their might, among other things requesting injunctions forbidding all VIA products from leaving Taiwan. (The pretext then was that VIA was abusing Intel IP by using the P3 bus with a DRAM type Intel had not sanctioned.)

VIA quickly gained > 50% of the P3 chipset market.

Indeed, the only reason you see ALi, SiS, and soon-to-be nvidia and others getting into the 3rd-party chipset market is because VIA paved the way a couple years ago.

Intel tried every FUD tactic in the book, from suing in multiple jurisdictions to claiming that PC133 SDRAM was not stable (the DRAM itself! And this from the company which had spent the past year patching bugs with RDRAM!). Intel got their ass handed to them in court, and by in the summer of 2000 introduced the i815, essentially the BX@133 product they should have introduced in late 1998.

Intel doesn't like getting humiliated, though, and they've had a seemingly personal vandetta against VIA ever since. In retaliation, they denied VIA the chance to license the P4 bus, as ALi and SiS and (interesting) ATi have done. (This is the basis for the current *threatened* suits. However, it's interesting to note that the P4X266 is currently shipping and no suits have yet been filed, meaning this is probably just a bluff on Intel's part.)

Intel reps were even seen at the recent Comdex show threatening mobo makers who had VIA promotional balloons flying at their booths. All the balloons were taken by the Intel people.

However, Intel's case this time is as flimsy as last. Disregarding potential antitrust concerns, the fact remains that NatSemi, whom VIA recently purchased *did* have a license for the P4 bus, and thus so does VIA.

So does this mean VIA will have similar success as last time? Well, I think they'll easily prevail in court if it comes to that, although it appears that Intel may be playing this one all FUD and no bite: warning mobo manufacturers not to use the P4X266 rather than actually filing any lawsuits. While of course not stated in the article, the well-documented fact is that Intel is telling the mobo makers that if they use the VIA chipset they will have their allocation of Intel's SDRAM (and soon-to-be DDR) P4 chipset, the i845, curtailed or dropped altogether. The result will likely be that only the third-tier mobo makers, who probably wouldn't have gotten a Brookdale allotment anyways, will be using the P4X266.

But another reason VIA won't snap up the P4 chipset market is much more hopeful. SiS' DDR Athlon chipset, the 735, has earned rave reviews, significantly beating every other chipset around. Their upcoming 635 chipset for the P4 will offer all that and more, including support for 333MHz DDR (PC 2700) which is coming down the pipeline now.

And they *do* have a P4 license.

Re:There's history here.

[Glytch]

Wow. I just bought a VIA motherboard for my K6 CPU because a very good friend told me it was reliable. Now I feel even better. :)

Re:There's history here.

[csbruce]

Doesn't all of this product tying, threatening distributors, manipulating markets, etc. sound kind of familiar?

Re:There's history here.

[fleck_99_99]

Via Technologies didn't purchase National Semiconductor; they purchased the majority of Cyrix PC processor intellectual properties from National Semiconductor. National retained some properties that they've used to show off at recent shows with their information appliance gizmos. Via did NOT (and COULD not) obtain the licensing agreements with Intel through this deal.

(Disclaimer: I work for National Semi, and all of this information is available in public press releases.)

Re:There's history here.

[DeeKayWon]

Actually, it was S3 that VIA bought. S3 and Intel had a 10-year cross-licensing agreement, and according to VIA, that's what's gives them the Pentium 4 bus license.

VIA's dealings with NatSemi were the above-mentioned buyout of Cyrix IP, plus VIA contracted NatSemi to do manufacturing of their Pentium 3 chipsets after Intel revoked VIA's P6 bus license.

Re:There's history here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I'll be buying any Intel processors as long as AMD remains a viable competitor. Now that Intel considers AMD a threat, they're going into their traditional price war thing to try to keep them down for a couple of years. But I'll stick with AMD, thanks.

Re:There's history here.

[jake-in-a-box]

AMD has already survived Intel's best efforts to run them off the map. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say they're stronger now than ever before. Beside's AMD is to Intel what Apple is to Microsoft - the only thing standing between them and an anti-trust suit. Oh, wait.

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[GigsVT]

And even if they go out of business, someone will buy their assets (probably Intel), including the patents. Now, the new owner might not try to fight to enforce the patents, but someone somewhere will still have them.

Ok, What am I missing here?

[stuffman64]

Ok, I just don't get this:

"They are not licensed to sell products that are compatible with the Pentium 4." -Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.

The way I see it, would that also make any software that runs on the Pentium 4-based computer illegal too? Well, unless of course, your software is free (and it should be). They should sue Microsoft also, because those bastards sell products that are compatible with Pentium 4s, and it doesn't even work half the time!

Licencing, P4 bundles with Rdram, and stupid Intel

[jabagi]

There is a short explanation from a VIA executive about the legal threats in Tom's Hardware Guide. Via is basicly saying that they will cover any legal fees board manufacters might be liable to pay to Intel for manufacturing Via's new chipset. It seems that Via is expecting a huge amount of profit from this new chipset.

I also have a question for those in the US. Can you buy single P4 chipsets without Rdram? When P4 came out here they only sold them with Rdram bundles, but now they actually sell P4s and their RDrams seperately. What they do is take out the Rdram that came in a P4 box and sell them seperately. I wonder if that's legal...

BTW, I am actually beginning to hate Intel. I never liked them since I have known about AMD and some of Intel's monopolisctic tactics but it gets very annonying to hear them sue or slander some other company or technology every week.

I know it's sort of meaningless to ask legal questions on /. but I'll ask anyway: Could I for example build a fan specificly designed for P4s without Intel's consent? Would I get sued? Just because Intel has filed patents?! I mean Via must have produced its own cpu interface for P4. Other than that, it's just the number and the layout of the CPU pins they are using. Intel's gonna sue Via because of this?!!? Can somebody explain?

The stats don't lie.....

[El_Nofx]

Toms hardware proved it. This chipset works well, it is cheap, it is out first, and Intel hates it because there isn't a damn thing they can do about it.
Rambus has already sued just about every memory manufacturer for some reason or another, if Intel sues Mobo Manf. and VIA, that would look real good for the guys who started the whole rambus intel deal. Ok, we put out an inferior product that was away from the main streem and natural flow of the industry, no body bought it because it cost 3 times what everything else on the market did. It offered no real performance gain and it ended up getting us in littigation with half of the hardware companies in the country.
I would say that was pretty successful, wouldn't you?

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[ergo98]

That depends on the user. Dual-channel PC800 RDRAM is faster than DDR DRAM (is anyone else rather underwhelmed by DDR? Seriously there was such an outpouring of excitement over it, and of course the name itself implies dual performance, yet it's marginally better than SDR SDRAM. Perhaps they need to start multi-channeling it...oh wait they will with the nvidia nForce [a motherboard I am very anxiously awaiting]). Anyways to the kind of people who are looking for the fastest of the fastest for whatever, RDRAM may be quite economical indeed.

Personally I'd get an Athlon, preferably on a nForce motherboard.

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[ergo98]

Rather than RDRAM, get excited about the much more scalable multi-channel low-end solutions which are appearing in the pipeline, the first of which will be the nforce. It dual-channels, but one can imagine quad-channeling, octo-channeling, etc. Exciting times.

In other news...

[BierGuzzl]

AMD is warning users not to use the Intel P4

So the problem is?

[Powercntrl]

If the interface used by the P4 is in fact patented, Intel is just protecting their IP as allowed under current patent law. Sure, you can have a problem with the patent laws, but then you should be attacking the patent laws, not how companies (such as Intel or Unisys) choose to use them to their advantage. Yes, Intel can take their ball and go home if they don't like how you play... If you have a problem with that, use someone else's ball or bring your own. Unisys's patenting of GIF spawned the creation of PNG, MP3 patents spawned OGG... Intel's patents got you down? Buy AMD.

Re:So the problem is?

[Jay Carlson]

And this use of the law advances the public good...how?

My meter for "be careful, somebody's trying to pull a fast one" now trips when the discussion's terminology gets "Intellectual Property" added to it. There is no such thing in the law.

There are legal mechanisms for patents, trade secrets, copyrights, trade marks, service marks (and a few others), but none of these legal mechanisms are as strong or complete as those laws related to real property. And that's as intended; real property and intellectual creations have very different characteristics.

People who are pushing the term "intellectual property" into arguments often are indicating their desire to make the legal controls[1] over information creations to be as strong or stronger than those over tangible property. So that not only means eliminating fair use and expiry, but also the creation of new categories of government control mechanisms for those things that inconveniently don't fit into the existing legal structures.

[1](Note "controls"; "protections" is another attempt to shift the terms of the debate.)

Re:So the problem is?

[mamba-mamba]

Intel is not refusing to license the bus altogether. They are selectively licensing it to chipset vendors they approve of. IANAL, but could this be illegal anti-competitive behavior? Also, is it a coincidence that they waited until VIA and others (e.g., Micron) were nearly finished before they pulled this rabbit out of their hat? I mean, Intel surely knew about this for quite some time, and even provided these companies with secret Intel documents to facilitate development. All of a sudden now they say they won't license the technology? Does not compute.

MM
--

Article translation

[lie as cliche]

Intel Corp. (INTC - news), in its ongoing dispute with Via Technologies Inc., of Taiwan, is warning computer makers to steer clear of a new chip set from Via that could enable the manufacturers to build cheaper Pentium 4-based PCs by enabling them to use a less costly high-speed memory technology.

Intel, as part of dirty tricks against competitor Via, released anti-Via messages in the media thinly diguised as a public service warning, alerting consumers to the alarmingly lower costs of its competitor's products.

Intel claims that Via does not have the necessary licensing for its Apollo P4X266 chip set.

An Intel executive somehow decided it would be helpful to their profits to inform the public that Via concerns itself with manufacturing products rather than getting into bed with Intel.

Intel representatives have privately cautioned PC and motherboard manufacturers in the United States and overseas against using the product, saying it could draw them into a costly legal battle, said sources with some of those companies.

Determined to go all the way with the bad press, Intel threatened prospective corporate clients of their competitor with legal action if they used the more efficient product.

Intel has repeatedly taken Via to court over licensing disputes and is currently is pursuing a lawsuit involving chip sets designed by Via for use with Athlon processors made by rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Intel has a history of fighting its competition in the courtroom rather than in the marketplace.

According to Intel, Rambus offers the best performance.

Intel apparently considers itself credible enough to offer "impartial" advice to consumers.

Pricing has become a key issue this year as Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., and PC makers struggle through an industrywide slump.

Intel is nervous and jumpy about this, despite claims inferring that Via produces an inferior product.

Amid weaker-than-expected sales of the Pentium 4, Intel has announced it will release an SDRAM chip set next month and a DDR product early next year.

Intel's numbers are down and it's looking to point fingers. Intel itself plans to use similar manufacturing techniques to those it defames, but can't get them into the marketplace as fast as its competition.

But with Via releasing its DDR chip set now, the company, which holds about a 35 percent share of the world chip set market, stands to reap financial rewards by beating Intel to the market by several months.

Whereas Via has all their ducks in a row, stands to profit from it, and Intel doesn't like it, opting for a smear campaign.

Following Via's announcement this week, Intel claimed the company is not authorized to sell the product.

Lacking in actual facts against Via's product, Intel simply repeated the same gripes over again to pad out the press release.

"They are not licensed to sell products that are compatible with the Pentium 4," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.

And over again.

Mulloy would not say whether Intel was warning its business partners to avoid using Via's product, saying only that "those discussions are typically very private."

Intel refused to admit to telling companies the same thing behind closed doors that it's currently telling the public in a national press release, describing it as a very private matter.

However, a Via representative confirmed that companies had reported such incidences to them.

However, its competitor says they know Intel has.

Brown declined to discuss the licensing controversy, saying only that Via was "comfortable with this."

Brown was reluctant to say anything without running it through Via's legal department first, but suggested he didn't think Intel had a leg to stand on.

In other news, sources at Intel say they've decided to forego this kind of shallow denouncement in favor of simply advertising its competitors products in a line of television and print advertisements.

What kind of godawful reporting is this? Intel smear campaigns billed as news... Didn't they bother interviewing the companies in question that Intel was suspected of threatening, rather than getting a very biased "Did not!" "Did too!" from Intel and Via? Sheesh. I'm surprised this was accepted by Slashdot, although it was fun ripping it apart. Blatant corporate hijinx are beat sitcoms hands-down for entertainment value.

Intel Wants to RAM Ewe Via your Asus

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone remember when Intel tried to buy up the worlds production of RAM so everyone would have to go to them for motherboards. This was like a decade ago. It was a dismal failure because manufacture responded by increasing capacity ratherr quickly. This in itself was funny. Imagine Intel not understanding semiconductory manufacturing! Talk about a hide bound company. I always felt that their involment with Rambutt was an attempt to reserect the same dream.

Smokescreen

[DarkHelmet]

Even though Intel says they don't want you to use VIA, they do. Intel wants people to use Via chipsets, even if they don't claim that they do. Right now, market share for the Pentium 4 is constantly losing ground to the Athlon, partially due to the fact that the memory / motherboard solutions are expensive, without any hope of redemption within the near future.

Why? The Rambus deal, which doesn't expire until 2002! Once the contract between Intel and Rambus expires, Intel is going to pull out all stops on making DDR motherboards. But they can't do that just yet.

The solution? Enter VIA. If there's no licensing from Intel, there's no fear of retaliation from Rambus (namely backing out of all the stock options Intel has in them). All Intel is doing is clearly telling Rambus that they aren't abandoning them... yes.

Honestly, what does Intel care? Chipsets aren't Intel's bread and butter, processors are. Why does Intel make chipsets? To assure that third party manufacturers don't cripple board speeds.

They don't mind VIA all that much. Consider the alternative .

Re:Smokescreen

[/ASCII]

That's what every hardware site has been speculating for the last year. But the above warning proves you're wrong. Intel taking VIA to court is a pretty sure sign they DONT want Via making a DDR chipset.

This means that Intel is more afraid of loosing a part of the chipset marketshare to Via, than loosing a part of the CPU marketshare to AMD. They might be right, Joe Average doesn't care about what chipset they use, but they might know that the CPU should be an Intel.

I have a cool evil solution

[cb0y]

Lets all of us programmers put in lots of delayms(3) loops in our code to make it run 3x slower on P4/RDRAM systems, thereby making them run as fast as celeron400s.

That way if enough people do this, people will
A) sell their P4s, buy amd
B) buy amds before P4s.

Hell, make a virus that does this, slowing down P4/RD systems only.

Re:I have a cool evil solution

[harpotheclown]

You make a good point, but I can't help but think that you smoke too much crack!

Ridiculous.

[arcade]

I'm more than happy to oblige Intel. I'll just stay clear of their CPU's. Since they're stupid enough to enforce patents like that -- I'll simply not use'em.

There are good alternatives available. :)

Way to go Intel...

[windi]

But what's Intel going to do as soon as Via P4 boards hit the market, sue every single board manufacturer ?

This could be the step that makes the P4 affordable, but then Intel looses RAMBUS royalties
(AFAIK Intel collects them) and the sales of its chipsets.

Intel is just spreading bull to scare customers away from Via over to Intel.

seems like a bunch of intel bull.

[AA0]

Via bought S3 graphics.... from anandtech "Luckily VIA has another alternative, because of their acquisition of S3 Graphics VIA claims to have inherited licensing rights to Intel's buses which were originally given to S3. "

If they really have a license for P4s, then this is just like Microsoft calling linux a cancer... they are afraid of it, and intel knows that can't get out of the rambus deal until 2002, they'll lose a lot of chipsets to VIA in those months.

I have a feeling that VIA has a leg to stand on, while I'm not a fan of them, I hope the hurt intel pretty bad.

one more reason

[walker2030]

this is just one more reason to not get a P4
in proformance test DDR previeled over RDRAM

Re:Licencing, P4 bundles with Rdram, and stupid In

[mamba-mamba]

My understanding is that Intel has patented the host bus (FSB) for the P4, and is licensing it selectively to chipset vendors it approves of (yes, there are some, e.g., Serverworks). I sort of thought such selective practices were illegal, but I certainly don't know.

Micron is having a similar problem to Via, where Intel is trying to stop a chipset of theirs which is currently under development.

MM
--

VIA is not the only one

[mamba-mamba]

VIA is not the only one.

Intel appears to be essentially on the warpath against chipset makers. Well, there is at least one chipset maker which seems to have Intel's approval (maybe Intel is going to buy them. heh,heh), but it appears that Intel is refusing to license the P4 bus technology to all the others.

If this is not just some kind of posturing (which it probably is) it could lead to more complete polarization of the Intel architecture market into Intel and non-Intel camps. That is, the chipset vendors may have no choice but to put all their efforts into making AMD compatible products only. It seems kind of humorous that there could be a non-Intel Intel-Architecture camp.

It's a shame that Intel didn't patent the x86 instruction set, then they could have stopped AMD, cyrix and others from ever building processors at all.

MM
--

In other news...

[risacher]

The Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) issued a warning that automobile and truck accessories sold by AutoZone Inc.(NYSE:AZO) did not have a license for the interfaces on Ford vehicles.

"We're especially upset by the release of inexpensive `Yosemite Sam - Back Off!' and `Naked Girl Silhouette' mudflaps. They have no right to sell those things and put them on Ford Vehicles.", a Ford spokesman was quoted as saying. AutoZone officials declined to comment on the threatened lawsuit, but an inside source claimed that they regarded Ford's move as "asinine".

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[VAXman]

Intel's upcoming Tulloch chipset support quad channel RDRAM (droool....). RDRAM is much more scalable than DDR due to lower pin count. Dual channel RDRAM has fewer pins than single channel DDR, which makes motherboard design much cheaper.

Re:Licencing, P4 bundles with Rdram, and stupid In

[Zeinfeld]

I also have a question for those in the US. Can you buy single P4 chipsets without Rdram?

Yes, and it would be an ilegal tied sale if Intel tried to require it.

Intel seem to have screwed up really badly here. RDRAM is going to remain expensive, not least because RAMBUS is suing all the fabs with their smurfed SDRAM 'patent'.

A billion dollars of RAMBUS stock may sound a lot but that is nothing to losing 2% of market share to AMD. It appears to me that Intel have stalled the P4 range entirely with this deal.

Plus the RAMBUS stock that Intel will get is probably worth much less than a billion dollars right now, after the SDRAM fraud finding RAMBUS has been in free fall - remember that the judge only reversed some of the fraud findings and did not reverse the non infringement ruling.

The genius that made this mess probably gets paid several million a year with millions of options on top. After this fiasco he probably wishes they were puts not calls.

Re:Who wants ddr anyway?

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, no.

RDRAM motherboards are MUCH more difficult to design than SDRAM and DDR boards because the tolerances are much lower due to the high bus speed. RDRAM boards are in no way cheaper than SDRAM boards.

What's more, RDRAM is far more expensive to manufacture than SDRAM (aside from the stupid patent royalties) because of the way the memory is designed. SDRAMs are just simple SOJ surface-mount chips on a cheap board. RDRAMs have some other more exotic method (flip-chip?), plus a "heat speader" across all the chips because memory accesses to an RDRAM board tend to concentrate on just one chip on the board (rather than accessing them in parallel), causing that chip to heat up so much that it needs the heat speader as a heat sink.

The pincount of an RDRAM or DDR board does nothing to manufacturing cost; it's just a board with an edge connector etched on like all the other wiring, so there's no cost difference. The connector for DDR might have more pins, but that's not a huge cost increase, and with the far greater volumes of DDR that are purchased, and resultingly the far greater volumes of DDR sockets manufactured and sold, DDR sockets will cost less due to economy of scale.

nForce from nVidia

[jabagi]

I know this is off-topic but I submitted a story about this and it was rejected...

I am about to upgrade my computer and it's either going to be a Duron 800 or Tbird 900 but I am having a hard time deciding on a mainboard. There are a few chipsets that work with SDRam and DDRRam but I have read about nVidia's new chipset nForce. And I just read [in both Tom's Hardware forums and The Register] that due to implementation difficulties it might be delayed as long as two months. If it is going to come in a month or so, I am willing to wait. Has anyone else heard about this?

PS:BTW if nForce lives upto to the expectations, it's gonna kick Intel's a$$ and give Amd a deserved boost.

Don't use DDR either way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, DDR is less expensive, but... If you're serious about using your computer, the 2x - 3x bandwidth increase RAMBUS can grant you will really come in handy when doing resource intensive applications. (i.e. 3D rendering, large scale database managment, large scale application compilation, etc...).

Sure, the P4 isn't all that great for gaming, but that's not what it was designed for (although it's marketed that way...).

If you're going to pay the little extra for a P4 (which will guarnteed your CPU won't be obsolete in a few years), DO NOT use DDR. It just doesn't make any sense, does it?

Anyway, long live SSE2 and RAMBUS!!!!

I wouldn't buy it anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, let's face it, via makes chipsets like old people fuck; slowly and poorly. I've never had worse motherboards than via chipset boards. Extremely bad support, and packed to the brim with bugs. I far from love some of the design aspects of i815E, but at least it works.

What is the Intel Inside sticker on PCs for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning label

Intel... Bad dog!

[darksamurai]

I think the only reason Intel is upset is because VIA jumped the gun before they themselves could stand before the adulation of their peers and say "We are lowering our prices, aren't we swell?".

RIMMS (PC-800) are quick, but by all accounts, the bus isn't quite able to handle all it's capabilities yet. So, you're payin' premium prices for mid-grade performance. DDR is pretty cheap (I've found it $50.00 for 256 Megs)and would provide pretty good performance.

But...You watch... I'm betting that Intel will release the DDR option for their latest "Celeron" line.

a metaphore which can be understood by the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

And in related news, Coca Cola is warning drinkers to not use Coca Cola on a Pepsi base, lest the chemicals mix and result in a thermo-nuclear explosion.

I feel this coming up:

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel, you will be remembered as one of the most brutal, idiotic and bullish corporation in the history of computing.

What other options? (was: Why bother with a P4?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently I started looking at alternatives to an Intel Pentium III-based Linux system; the obvious choice for "x86" style hardware is the AMD Athlon. Performance - great. Price - great. Compatibility - well, here's where it all goes downhill very quickly.

The main chipset options for AMD Athlon-based motherboards are AMD, AMD/VIA hybrid, VIA, ALi and SiS.

The SiS system is supposedly the fastest, though SiS and ALi both suffer (from a Linux kernel perspective) of either missing features or sometimes being misdiagnosed as being a "VIA chipset".

There aren't any all AMD-only motherboards anymore (excluding Athlon MP-style systems and first-generation Athlon motherboards), just about everyone with an AMD northbridge is using a VIA southbridge - generally the 686A or 686B.

Anyone who has read the Linux Kernel mailing list over the past few months knows that an Athlon CPU, VIA chipset (complete or hybrid), Linux and stability are mutually exclusive - in fact, the Linux kernel developers often complain about the various bugs in VIA chips and VIA's lack of disclosure.

Sadly, the only chipsets with decent performance, rock solid stability and complete feature support appear to be those from Intel - which leads us back to suffering an Intel CPU. Any attempt to use some other chipset and an Athlon CPU leads to audio problems, DMA problems, loss of data, need to disable DMA and loss of disk I/O performance and all manner of other headaches.

Before anyone says, "I've got an Athlon and it runs Linux just fine!" - yeah, I know. READ the Linux Kernel Mailing List and you'll see that the problems relating to the Athlon/VIA/Linux combo are many and varied. Alas, I can't risk data loss and/or platform stability like that. I also don't think it's reasonable to "tune down" (use a non-Athlon optimised kernel, disable DMA, rip out the sound card, etc.) just to maintain stability under Linux.

Is it any wonder why so many people are still buying Intel systems at all? They work, like it or not. *sigh*

Intel's licesnse is probably illegal (antitrust)

[aphor]

The Sherman Antitrust Act forbids using dominance in one market (PC Processor) to leverage control over another market (PC Chipsets). If you feel Intel is harming your consumer choice, file a complaint with the US FTC online, but please RTFM first.