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Intergraph Injunction Against Intel Suspended For Now
Kilbasar writes "News.com is reporting that the Itanic has hit another iceberg, with a District Court granting an injunction stopping Intel from making the chip. However, the injunction was immediately suspended to allow for another round of appeals, and I don't really see anything coming of this other than Intel paying Intergraph anywhere from $100M to $250M to use their patents."
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB103601301 9593598031,00.html
I believe it's $150mill minimum
... not after they've confirmed their chips will be TCPA/DRM enabled.
We can only hope that AMD won't sell out in the same way.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The companies further agreed
Agreed... as in mutually came to a deal.... the court didn't order this part. Intel assumedly got something in return, though I admit I havn't kept up with the case (or even read the fucking article) so I don't know what.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Let's make this a discussion about a technology issue by people who know about technology. AMD Hammer chips have the "status quo" better label because of their 32bit compatibility combined with 64bit advancement. This is seen as a bridge to true 64bit computing without losing the current investment in 32bit software. In regards to this patent lawsuit, how will it affect Intel? I don't believe the amounts are large enough to even make a dent in Intel's publicity budget, much less affect their long term outlook for this line of processors. Only time will tell. As for the "General Public", they can go check out the local trade shows where they can get some great deals on *wince* "Authentic Pentium Computers for $300".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Yeah, I guess that's how it went. But imagine the potential extra costs Intel must have feared when they decided to sacrifice the $150 million to reach the agreement. It would be nice to know which extra ace Intergraph had in their pocket during the discussions.
They got a contract from a previous state government here in Victoria (Australia) to do this for the ambulance service. It was a massive screwup, with buggy software, inexperienced staff, people at the top of the ambulance department mysteriously going to work for Intergraph after signing the contract with them, and opposition from the ambulance drivers' union, and eventually the contract had to be cancelled amidst political scandal.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Intergraph used to make its own chips - the CLIPPER line that they used in its workstations. They went to Intel based workstations back in the early ninties and have sold off most of their HW business. The problem with hardware is that the margin is small enough as it is, but Intergraph insisted on making it all in the US, not in Tawian like most.
INTC 17.30 +0.31 +1.82% 77.26 Mil
AMD 6.14 -0.18 -2.85% 5.239 Mil
INGR 18.40 -0.64 -3.36% 1.151 Mil
So who is suffering ?
Semper ubi sub ubi
They used to. They used to make a range of workstations, using a chip called the Clipper (no relation to the encryption chip). It got killed in the volume economics of Intel. Intergraph then started with a range of Intel workstations, and that business crashed and died, which Intergraph states was due in large part to Intel refusing engineering support in order to coerce them to hand over patent rights. Then they started suing. Intergraph has a long history of litigation with Intel. Been going on and off since 1997, this is just another round of "been there, done that".
Actually, the quote's from Mike McGee at the Inquirer.
Actually, McNealy's use predates McGee's.
But I'm not saying that McNealy invented the expression - just that he's made it his own. Just like Barry Switzer didn't invent the wishbone offense; he just borrowed it and used to run over Nebraska and Texas for fifteen years or so.
--Jim
I used to live near the Intergraph home base (Huntsville, Alabama ... and before someone goes "Alabama, no wonder", it's got a number of technical and scientific companies).
... they were one of the early players there and could have kicked butt but it takes a lot of work to get into the consumer market from the high-end market (again, visions of SGI).
... we ran what at the time was one of the largest NNTP servers for free at the ISP I was working at because we running it on Intergraph machines and they were using us as a stress-test (by the time I left in 1999 it had nearly a terabyte of storage in 3 * 12 drive RAID chassis) ... but as part of the test it had to run Windows, which was not my favorite choice for NNTP).
... they made good products, but from what I've seen they have spiraled down alot since their heyday. I wouldn't be surprised if the Intel lawsuits (and this is by no means the first one Intergraph has filed) are a major source of cash for them.
Intergraph's past has been like a smaller version of SGI, only with less flashy products (scientific workstations more so than graphics, although both did both). They started out as a proprietary systems company that did massive value adds to existing technology.
However, in the mid-90's they became more and more dependent on Microsoft and Intel to do alot of their work. As such they became less specialized but still higher cost.
In the mid-late-90's they had a number of blunders (including the now infamous Windows NT-commanded navy ship that went dead in the water due to software issues). They also fumbled on the emerging consumer PC 3D graphics card market
They still had high-end hardware
I won't bad mouth them too much, I got a free dual PPro server and external 6 drive RAID case from one of the Intergraph admins who worked with us on the NNTP server. I loved that Beast.
Anyway
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Yes, but madsenj37 has a point. Many consumers buy Intel chips because of many different reasons. One of those reasons is the fact that Intel chips tend to last longer under heavy use and feature a few options like overheat protection. The average computer user doesnt upgrade their system as often as us geek/gamer/techies do. I do not necessarily mean that Intel makes a better chip, they merely make a chip that lasts longer. I, for one, use AMD chips in my system because they have a bigger punch for the buck.
Intergraph has been around since about 1970. I worked at Intergraph from 1990-1996. They used to make their own CAD workstations; hardware & software. This was back when a high end CAD workstation would cost 50-75 thousand dollars. The hardware would often include it's own furniture with dual or triple monitors built in and a D-size digitizer.
They were never a consumer product company. They sold workstations to certain engineering and design niches. Their specialty is civil engineering and geographic infomation software. Have you ever looked at a topographic map? At one point all USCGS topographic maps were made on Intergraph workstations. They sell a lot of 911 systems, a spin-off of their other GIS stuff.
They sold some electronic design software, mostly a spin-off of the products they used in house to design their Clipper chip (not the encryption Clipper chip. Boy do I remember the furor when the govt started talking about that!).
They wrote their own publishing software based on a gencoding system similar to SGML. This was used for all of their in-house documentation. TV Guide used an enhanced version of this system for a few years.
I worked in their mechanical division. They were doing object oriented programming in the early 1980's, long before it became popular. Unfortunately, being one of the first, they made a lot of mistakes in the way they chose to implement it, which led to an enormous number of bugs and workarounds in the later products that were built on the same core technology. I could model anything in I/EMS. However, for anything beyond simple models, I'd spend about 40% of my time working around bugs. I/VDS (shipbuilding software) was built on top of I/EMS. They wone a $600 million contract with the Navy back in 1990-1991.
Shortly before the Pentium came out they were realizing that PC's were approaching serious CAD workstation levels. People were not going to pay $35k for a Clipper workstation when they could get a PC maybe half the speed, but one-tenth the cost. They made a couple of deals with Intel and sold their clipper chip unit to Sun. They were one of the first companies to ship a computer with a Pentium inside, and they were the first to ship a multi-processor Pentium machine. Back when a good $2k Pentium PC would ship with 16 or 32MB of RAM. They were shipping a $10k PC with 256MB of RAM, four processors, and a graphics card optimized for major vector graphics work. Note: vector graphics, not animation. Gamers were very disappointed when this $10k machine would do worse on Doom than their $2k machine at home. Still it had major horsepower. Bill Gates used an Intergraph workstation when he introduced Windows NT. When he said "This is the coolest machine in the world!", INGR stock rose about 30% the next day. Then one day as a couple of Intergraph's engineers were working with some Intel engineers to optimize Intergraph's next CAD workstation to work with the Pentium II the Intergraph engineer said "Hey, that looks an awful lot like one of our old Clipper designs." and the patent lawsuits and corporate warfare started.
Unfortunately, though they pioneered a lot of things, they kept getting passed by the new kid on the block. PTC's Pro/Engineer had all of the features of I/EMS with twice the speed, half the cost, and relatively no bugs. (That was back in 1995. Now Pro/E is in almost the same position relative to SolidWorks.) And in hardware, you can't keep selling $10k CAD workstations when 1GB of RAM is about $100. They've spunoff or shut down about 3/4 of their old operations and are concentrating on what they're good at. GIS and suing Intel.