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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.
and so attatched to the board anyway, making pin compatibility a non-issue.
Man, I was so happy the day I bought an AMD-compatible mobo. AMD's are not, of course, pin-compatible with Intel. AMD is not a perfect angel, but they're a sight better than Intel, especially when you consider you can get the same power as an Intel chip in an AMD chip for typically half to one-third the price. It was a difficult choice to make since it meant forevermore sacrificing the resuability of intel processors motehrboards I already owned, but I'm glad I did.
My friends who retain Intel compatibility continue to pay top dollar for less power. If I think it's time for a cpu upgrade, I simply go to my local AMD redistributor and pay about the cost of two boxed games for a chip that is more than fast enough than anything I care to do with it.
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Of course, what's to stop some clever young upstart from being willing to raise his CPU off the board by an addition 3 to 4 mm, to place a special ceramic enclosure between the CPU and the board? This enclosure would do nothing more than swap the pins back (sorta like a null modem cable). Of course, this would probably also require a slightly different cooling solution, but at least it's doable.
And there you have it. VIA's chipsets can work with Intel's CPUS and Intel's chipsets can work with VIA's CPU's once again. All VIA has to do is *NOT* be the manufacturer of the conversion enclosure.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
you can't buy single Via processors anyway
I think you're mistaken
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The CPU component of the Eden Platform is referred to as ESP. C3 is the name of a processor family that's sold quite separately from the Eden Platform; I have one in an SV24 at home. There's no doubt that the C3 and ESP are very similar technologically, but they really are different products packaged and marketed differently and I'm sure VIA would like to continue selling both.
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I agree with you to a point, but i feel i should clarify. I have a pentium 4 and a pentium 4 Xeon at work. Both are sluggish and fail to meet my expectations consistently when I multitask heavily. However, before my wife switched to linux, her AMD with half the megahertz and half the RAM of my box at work ran considerably smoother, froze up less mid-task (not critical stopping freeze, several seconds of pause), and was over all a more pleasing computer. This may be due to the motherboard chipsets, but overall it has given me a very bad impression of the capability of the respective chips. Perhaps it is the motherboard chipsets, i know not. What I do know is that if my car, regardless of engine, cannot continually run as long as the engine is in order with fuel (or electricity), I will likely not buy another of that car.
Yes, i do think Intel plays the market. They play the market like a chump. And the market falls for it every time. I recall building my friend's box for her, and her mom was initially rather insistent upon a P4 until she found out that AMD was considerably cheaper and that the features of the P4 were not going to make enough of a difference for a box to write reports on for college. She ended up with rather than the $2000 machine that she had initially intended to buy her daughter, but a $1200 computer that surpassed the Pentium 4 she had been eyeing in every way for what she needed it for (more mhz, more ram, a few options she didnt even think of like a NIC, a modem, a cd burner, etc. all of which would have cost more than her initial 2k base price). So its not that the market doesnt care, its just that they dont know any better.
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Here's an annecdote. Earlier this year, I was building two new computers from components, for a new server and a desktop Linux system. I initially set out to make low-power, totally silent systems, based around the VIA C3 CPU.
But after doing research into cooling solutions, etc., I decided I could stand a tiny bit of noise, in exchange for greater processing power (I want to run Java web sites off the server box). So I upgraded the CPU to a Pentium III. This was possible, not just because the processors are opcode compatible, but because they were both Socket 370 compatible. Just swapped them out.
I would not have purchased an Intel CPU for the server system if I had made a commitment to a different socket format. So Intel would have lost.
More importantly, as a consumer, I won big time, by having a far more flexible system, that let me make an initial investment based on one set of requirements, and then upgrade the box later, when my requirements changed.
It's a shame that Intel doesn't want to keep this. After all, the C3 processor doesn't really compete with Intel's products -- there's quite a difference in processing power, at similar clock speeds. So let VIA have the low-power low end for us SilentPC enthusiasts, and own the rest. It's basic market segmentation, and Intel knows how to do that, profitably, very well.
The most interesting bit in my mind, however, is what happens to this rogue bus license owned by S3. Recall that S3 Inc. signed a patent cross-license with Intel, then exited the graphics business, became Sonicblue, and sold off its assets to a joint venture with Via called S3 Graphics. That's why the current deal excludes S3 Graphics.
However, Sonicblue is also auctioning off its assets. That means there's going to be an Intel bus license up for grabs, possibly. However, as we wrote here, Sonicblue's legal team says the license can't be transferred without Intel's permission. That should make the auction more interesting, certainly...