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End of Intel-Pin-Compatible CPUs?
sonamchauhan writes ""Intel, Via bury the hatchet" proclaims this news.com article. The settlement reportedly allows Via to build Intel-pin-compatible CPUs for three years more, but Via must cease pin-compatibility after that."
This settlement apparently closes out 27 existing lawsuits.
From the article, 11 legal suits are involved which reference 27 different patents from either side.
This is not at all true. I personally have owned at least four different Super Socket 7 boards (one is in my posession now) which would run either a K6 series processor, or any Socket 7 Pentium processor. Some of them would also run various Cyrix processors. VIA bought Cyrix. Hence, VIA *does* have the rights to some processors which are pin-compatible with some intel processors.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Tualatin (and to some extent, Coppermine) PIIIs and Celerons were incredibly good...clock for clock better than PIV. The "dirty little secret" about Banias/Centrino is that it is not based on the PIV core, but the PIII. This is why they talk about Centrino and Pentium-M, not about where in the Intel continuum the Pentium-M actually belongs.
I want to see the Centrino platform on the desktop. But we never will see it, because it would embarrass Intel and point up how failed the PIV architecture is.
Oh yeah, one more thing. VIA has been selling the CIII as part of the EPIA Mini-ITX platform, not really as a separate chip, and I suspect the tight connection between CIII and EPIA will be even tighter by the time this injunction takes effect three years from now.
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