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VIA to Create Pentium 4 'Clone'
PyroMosh writes: "ZDNet is carrying a brief article about VIA's plans to start producing clones of the Pentium 4. VIA's already in legal trouble with Intel and it seems unlikley that this will go unchallenged by the chipmaking juggernaut. The Register is also covering this, and SiliconStrategies.com has an article with a bit more detail."
Seems that in this case, a lawsuit makes sense. If I made something, had a competitor copy it (and not have my okay), you bet I'd sue.
-- The Hollow Man
Non illegitimati carborundum
Didn't AMD do something similiar in reverse engineering Intel's chips? Anyone know what legal action came of that?
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while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
"already in legal trouble with intel"
This is like calling a kickboxer a bad name and when he says "WHAT did you say" repeat it...
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
We all know that the Cyrix... well, sucks. It sounds like a bad move for VIA anyway. Why not mimic one of the AMD chips? If they are going to get into legal trouble, why not mimic something higher end.
3Dnow.net links to the article at: http://www.theinquirer.net/19100103.htm that states that VIA denies this. Gotta love the opening paragraph.
"Why does the world need a 2-GHz system?" quizzed Glenn Henry, president of Via's Centaur Technology Inc. subsidiary in Austin, Tex.
Quoted from the story, apparently VIA doesn't realize that games are the only real application pushing chips into new speeds. People wants games faster and people want games that are more realistic, by upping the CPU and GPU speeds, we can get to some very stunning graphics.
Might have to be careful, may result in actually creating the Matrix...Or would we be creating a Matrix inside a Matrix?
To reverse engineer and duplicate a processor requires a superior understanding of processor design and construction.
Once you have reverse engineered the processor, why wouldn't you then put your resources into designing a better processor based on what you've learned, rather than wasting time making a clone?
just running around looking for a biscuit that's not there
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
From your linked article:
SOURCES CLOSE TO VIA said that an employee who seemed to hint that the firm had a Pentium 4 clone it might launch in 2004
2004? By then Intel might be up to the Pentium 5 or 6! Why bother?
Why didn't they clone the athlon? It's faster and AMD is much less likely to sue the crud out of them than Intel.
So when do the $100 Geforce3 Ti500 clones come out now?
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
How will VIA have a competitive advantage?
They will use substandard manufactoring processes, open chip plants in third world dictatorships, and provide less customer outreach and support.
Good!
Poor countries will get chipmaking infrastructure, and chip manufacturers will produce more cheaply. This part of the information economy is the part that can reach the poorest countries first; a factory job making chips is the first step towards participation in a western style net economy.
VIA won't advertise with idiotic pitches like the Blue Men. Perhaps it will take another tack -- selling to budget computer makers.
The chip cost is a big part of computer cost, so a cheaper chip will enable more companies to produce cheap computers, improving competition in this market sector.
This is like spurring a housing market with a revolution in pre-fabricated housing. It makes possibilities available to an entirely new group of potential buyers.
Goat sex free since 2001
The thing I don't get is how VIA thinks they can get away with it? By this time, we've all whined about patent law, but this is where it SHOULD be applied, right?
In the end, it doesn't matter, as I don't imagine this will make processors cheaper faster...
-- The Hollow Man
Non illegitimati carborundum
Coming soon, Open Source hard drives. Does anyone have any spare beer coasters?
Regardless, the Hammer will be the processor of choice once it debuts.
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
2GHZ lets see based on the cyrix methodaligies that would be something like 20 x 100mhz bus in real world standards that would be 13 x 33mhz bus. I wonder if this chip will retain the heat features. Imagine a chip running at 500 C. And they will be cheap just like thier ancestors. 25$ a chip so when it burns its self up in 3 months you go buy another. GOD I WANT ONE!
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
Since intel is already hating on them for making a P4 chipset, and no mobo makers wanted to use it, VIA decided to make thier own motherboards, now this is just the next step why stop at making motherboards they are going to make the processors to go in them too.
It seems as if Via recognizes they will most likely be sued and be forced to forfeit some of their earnings if they clone Intel products. In the face of this, they also seem to feel that they can benefit enough to offset the losses caused by a lawsuit.
A similar incident occurred with John Deere and Caterpillar about 5 years ago. Caterpillar had figured out that using a rubber-tracked farm tractor gives farmers better yields. John Deere literally stole the concept and accepted the lawsuit because what they learned was so valuable it was worth it!
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
If P4 has been legitimately reverse-engineered, then VIA is beyond reproach. Typically, the companies who live by reverse-engineering go to great length to document the process. Of course, they'd have to pay hefty legal fees if that process is challenged in court, but for the giant like VIA this isn't much of a problem.
This has already been debunked as a rumor!
:)
Way to go slashdot....
http://www.theinquirer.net/19100103.htm - There's your linkified proof.
Assuming that VIA is in fact trying to make a P4 clone, is it possibable that they are trying to force a takeover. If VIA is having internal problems might they be trying to get Intel to sue for stock?
Otherwise this information is either a leak of gargantuan proportions or a hoax. I would personaly put my cash in the hoax theory.
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
When IBM first brought out their PCs they were
"cloned". IBM brought on the lawsuits which
ultimately failed. The important word here is
"cloned" which has a different meaning then
"copied". Cloning attempts reproduce the
functionality of the cloned item by coming up
with their own design. "Copying" makes an exact
duplicate of the original, which of course would
be illegal. (eg. like selling copied software CDs)
If anyone can (legally) make a x86 compatible processor nowadays, whats wrong with making one that will simply fit into a P4 socket? VIA can simply claim its a P4-clone and package a die of their own design. And I think that is what they're doing since it was mentioned in the article on The Register that there are 18 pipe stages in VIA's design.. and if I recall correctly, the P4 has greater than 20 pipeline stages.
I don't ever recall AMD getting sued for making those Super 7 K6-2s and K6-3s CPUs.
Considering how much trouble I've had
with VIA motherboard chipsets and random
crashes I wouldn't touch a VIA cpu with
a ten foot pole.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
Are they going to clone the heat too?
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Who wants a CPU that looks like a sheep
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
It seems from the article that all they are doing is making a chip that will be compatible with systems that are also compatible with the P4. All they mean by "P4 Clone" is that you can use it interchangeably with a P4. The only other similarity mentioned in the articles is the 18 stage pipeline, but there are so many ways of implementing such a pipeline that I doubt VIA's will be exactly the same. All in all, I say this is good competition, although it probably won't amount to much.
~ now you know
VIA can produce all the cpu it likes, I won't be buying any of them. If they still can't produce a stable motherboard chipset after years of research and practice, then how could they manage a completely functional x86 processor core ? I don't think they can do it well enough to chew into Intel.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The market for these would be people who are not already emotionally/contractually tied to Intel. This space is primarily held by AMD. Via is less likely to get any customers out of Intel. They are more likely to take customers from AMD.
Sure Intel will gripe, but if they're smart they'll let VIA in just enough to pound AMD.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
legacy code can lick my cajones, that piece of garbage should have been dropped a long time ago.
sigs are for suckers
Is already known to be highly saturated. Will VIA's chips be signifigantly cheaper than the Celrons or Durons (or at least have a better cost-to-performance ratio?) If so, will that margin be enough to keep the company afloat?
This sounds like something that would have been a great idea a year or two ago, but in this competitive (and now saturated) market, it will be tough going for the guys at VIA.
If VIA had cloned AMD it would still be pitiful. You can now have a mobo that causes problems with a constantly overheating proc that causes even more!
Besides that, I think that the core legal issue that VIA would face over this would be the Intel extentions such as SSE2, MMX, etc, and not over the core x86 instruction set (which they apparently have a license for)
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
Alternatives for the platform could be very good. Think of the Socket 7 architecture in retrospect. They ended up going much faster than the marketing people at Intel would have liked! People still use K6-2s and K6-IIIs, but who would use a p200 in this age?
this is another blow against no competition (note the double negative). intel no longer has the only chip for the p4 platform. This is good for consumers and it is good for the industry. Way to go Via!
It's been a long time.
where the buff...err..shee...errrr...pent...
damn, I give up.
Copyright means we get to *copy it, right*?
I had to say it, sorry.
But this begs the questions: Why? People lambasted the design of the P4 for bringing us what is in essence a 2Ghz+ 486, right?
Why on god's green earth would someone want to immitate rather than innovaaaa...
Ooops, never mind.
Moose
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
wouldn't it be illegal for Intel to reverse engineer the Jericho 4 and find out if it used reverse engineered components from the pentium 4?
"-I don't have a god complex, god has a ME complex"
If the Omniscient One is so deluded that He wants to use MS Windows Millenium Edition, than we're all lost. Imagine your world suddenly stopping, the sky goes blue, and then God hits the Reset button. Wait, the sky is blue right now, AHHH!!!!
By the time they come up with the P4 perfected, they'll be obsolete... probably big time obsolete.
Would be good for maybe a Nintendo Gameboy or something, though. Hehe..
"SOURCES CLOSE TO VIA said that an employee who seemed to hint that the firm had a Pentium 4 clone it might launch in 2004 hasn't been taken out and shot but is being advised to shop around for a bullet with his name on it."
Hmm...2004...i don't think anyone wants a p4 type chip in 2004...Does anyone? This thing accoording to the current rate of changing avery 1-1.5 years by 2004 this thing will be like...a waste of time. Why doesn't via just concentrate on making good mobo chip thingys?