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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.
Woo!
Well, pin compatibility isn't the issue I'd be concerned with, but opcode compatibility.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
just as I was saying the other night that i wished VIA would make C3s that go in AMD-socket boards...
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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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I believe the lindows pcs in wallmart uses the via c3 chips. Not exactly a fps gamers dream machine, but does make the machine very affordable. I think the desktops were about 200 dollars minus the monitor.
But, aside from the lower performing chip, it does it's job as a email/web browsing/messaging/word document editing/music playing home workstation.
From the article, 11 legal suits are involved which reference 27 different patents from either side.
because you are correct. Pentium 4 is a lousy chip, the pentium 3 not much better. Pentium II was the last truly respectable chip I have seen coming out of Intel. AMDs may run a bit hot, but their performance IMO is superior. Transmeta should make motherboards for "build yer own" types who want them. VIA has increasingly made more and more respectable chips as time goes on, and for cents on the dollar to the Intel CPU. The only thing keeping Pentium-line procs afloat is marketing at this point.
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According to the article, "The settlement--which involves 11 cases filed in five countries--will essentially make it far easier for Via to sell processors and chipsets to PC makers."
Where did the 27 come from? Oh, wait: "In total, 27 patents were at issue in the various cases."
Man, reading comprehension must be in short supply these days. There were 11 lawsuits involving 27 patents.
Speaking of reading comprehension, the settlement is for the following:
"For the first three years, Intel has agreed not to sue Via for making processors that come with buses and pin structures that are similar to Intel's products. Similarly, Intel has granted Via a license to make chipsets that are pin- and bus-compatible with Intel products for four years, and has agreed not to sue Via or its customers for using pin- and bus-compatible chipsets for another year beyond that."
So they can essientially get away with selling them for FIVE years, not three.
Geez...
I do.
:)
Having a fanless computer is really nice
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'
Isn't this blatantly anti competitive. Not mercurially illegal but stifling competition.
If there were a standard chip/motherboard interface then you would be able to choose the chip that you want and the board that you want based on your preferences. Once this grace period is over (3 years) you will have less combinations available.
When are businesses going to realise open standards = growth.
Mind you I use mini-itx at home anyway so I shouldn't complain.
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=15
Via makes a number of low-power (as in Watts) CPU's.
They also make chipsets for, among other things, P-IV. The chipsets don't really contain any processors as such, just memory/IDE/USB controllers etc.
No you cannot buy an Athlon and put it in a P4 motherboard, they are not pin-compatible (diff pin structure and number of pins on the chip as well as the socket) or bus compatible(bus architecture is completely different). The pin compatibility Via got is so they can make their chips compatible with Intel chipsets on Motherboards. I.E. You coulld buy an Intel-based motherboard, and put a Via chip in it.
"I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin"
The Register has an article about it as well.
Now this brings up the question on what teh chipset clause means for the industry. I know I have via chipsets on my Athlon boards, and it seems likely that VIA will keep producing theese, but what about the Intel market? Does this mean that there will be a player less in that market in five years? Its a rather long time, perhaps the current hardware model is obsoleted by then? MiniATX + integrated systems + Palladium (TPC, was that what it was called?).
I didn't do this, now did I?
absolutely. There are a number of the inexpensive Linux boxes sold at walmart.com that run C3 processors
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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.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You are correct sir. There are no FANS or even people that like that computing device of yours. :)
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
Pentium 4 is a lousy chip, the pentium 3 not much better
Please define "lousy". Do you mean that it requires more clock to reach a certain level of performance (which is what many typically mean). If so, how does this make it lousy if what you're measuring is the "complete" performance and not just say "efficiency". Intel made a very concious design choice when they went the super deep pipeline high clock route. Which has more "wow", the fact that you can ramp the clock rates up quicker, or that you can get more done with the clock that you have? Isn't this similar to engines, where you have one camp that likes big cubes and massive torque vs the camp that likes high effiency and high rpms. They both have their plus's and minus's and it really depends on the application?
The only thing keeping Pentium-line procs afloat is marketing at this point.
But don't you think that Intel "plays the market". By this I mean their processors have the price/performance ratio that they currently do because the market allows them to? It would appear that Intel could certainly afford to drop the price of their chips quite considerably if they wanted to, but this would be very damaging to the bottom line in the share holders eyes for no real benefit. So Intel continues to have the price of their chips higher than anyone else, because it makes their pocket books fat. If push came to shove, they could do a LOT of damage to the clones while still being able to survive.
Reporters must follow editorials rules. Generally, these rules make them use Via and Nvidia instead of VIA and NVIDIA. The use of ALL CAPS in a news story makes it look like a marketing piece.
Actually the off-die FPU was a full fledged 486DX CPU (ie with FPU unit) and installing it totally disabled the SX CPU.
A year and a half ago, I would've agreed with you. A year ago, I would've agreed with you. Around the release of the the socket 478 P4s with 512K L2 cache, I stopped believing.
I went to build a machine about 4 years ago. Top of the line P3 was $600 or so, so I picked up my 450mhz K6-2 for a little under $100. It wasn't faster by any stetch of the imagination, but it played games just fine coupled with the video card I could afford because of the savings. It wasn't beating Intel by any stretch, but it was cheap and reliable (that machine now resides with my parents, doing everything they want just fine).
I bought a 1ghz Athlon for about $200 or so. The 1ghz P3s cost more than twice as much, and were outperformed in nearly every respect. Those were AMDs glory days (starting there and progressing through to the Northwood P4s). AMD outperformed whatever Intel threw at them for about half as much. It was a no-brainer. The deficit increased even more wih the P4, which was only close when paired with RDRAM. There was an ever-so-brief period a little over a year ago where a lot of retail PC companies (the Compaqs and HPs of the world) were actually shipping their higher-end units with Athlons. I considered that great, because so few Joe Six-Packs knew the AMD name, and seeing that "trusted" companies (and not just screwdriver shops) used them went a good way in spreading the word about AMD
And then Intel got serious. They slashed the prices of their chips and released their 512KB L2 cache processors. I bought a 2.4Ghz P4 a couple of weeks ago for $160. The Athlon 2400+ was $130. These are two processors that would literally be neck-and-neck in almost any situation. If the Intel processor was $250, we'd definitely be talking AMD time, but it wasn't. It was $30 more, a number that could easily be made up for in any number of other areas. Plus, it was nice to forget about VIAs 4-in-1 crap (although the NForce stuff looks pretty nice). Now, I built a 2000+ for my brother about a month ago, and for stuff in that range ($80 for the proc, $70 for the NForce1 Board), AMD still rules, but I honestly hope the hammer seriously kicks ass if AMD wants to stay in this business.
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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> And may the market continue to buy competing chips that conform to standardized
> pin-outs, and blow non-conforming hardware right the fsck off.
Hehe, the funny part about that is Intel pretty much defined the standard pinouts, so if they choose to change it, guess what, that change is pretty much the standard.
So before and after the change, you think everyone should blow off every CPU maker that isnt Intel?
Well screw that parent poster, im sticking with AMD myself, you can keep your overpriced underpowered DRM enabled 'standard pinout' intel CPUs to yourself!
This is kinda off topic but related to Intel compatibility, all the centrino branded laptops are being sold with the Intel 2100 Pro mini-pci wireless adaptor. This adaptor does not currently work on Linux. Intel has announced tentative plans to support this adaptor on Linux. The are still deciding whether or not to release it as open source or binary only. Considering the large amount of laptops being sold with the 2100 Pro adaptor, I urge anyone, to contact Intel and let them know that you would like to see an open source wireless driver for linux, as soon as possible. You can also send them an e-mail too. We don't want this to turn in to another winmodem situation.
So I should start using Ibm instead of IBM? :-)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Yeah -- "If you want your name to stand out, buy an ad".
This is just common sense on the part of journalists -- if they could get away with it, companies would insist that their name must always be in inch-high distinctive letters in bright colors. And all of their products, too.
This Link gives a little info from the Centaur side of the issue.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
If you don't need the extra cycles a P4 or Athlon can put out, you're often better off with a c3 -- they're cooler and, by virtue of that, silent.
Mechanical parts are the weak link in computer reliability.
If you're building an largish embedded device, maybe a car MP3 player or a home theater DVD player or something, you want reliability, you need a certain amount of power but not more than that, and you don't want noise.
And many people don't need the extra cycles. I use a PII/266, which is significantly less powerful than a c3, and I'm happy. Having a silent box would be nice.
May we never see th
you can't buy single Via processors anyway
I think you're mistaken
From that page:
The 667MHz VIA Cyrix III is the coolest processor on the market
and
The 600MHz VIA C3 is the coolest processor on the market
I'm confused.
The priciple, that Intel can keep others from pin compatibility, is important. Intel has done everyting in its power to avoid direct competition. They have changed their own pinout frequently and threatened others who would follow. AMD has had longer lasting pinouts! The result is 5 or 6 types of i386 motherboards. While, thankfully, instruction set compatibility has been maitained, there is less competition in the motherboard and chip market because of this. Oh well.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
As someone who has been involved in development of computer boards (not just PCs), I can say pin compatibility is not aimed for the end-user's benefit, VIA C3 is not just intended to be a "replacement CPU". Although it could be used as such, it is not the biggest benefit of pin compatibility.
The main reason why it's desirable for Via to have a pin-compatible CPU with Intel's specification is because it shortens the development time and cost of a motherboard. It's easier and cheaper for the M/B manufacturer to design the board's layout if the signals are in the same place, because a re-layout of a M/B is very expensive in both time and money. (in some cases the full development can go upwards to several hundred thousand dollars)
Additionally, there are chipsets that can support both Intel and Via CPUs, (most notably some SIS SOC designs) making it even easier to make a M/B, but this fact it's not necessarily related to having interchangeable CPUs with a socket. Having a socket is of little to no use because Intel and Via CPU's are aimed at different market segments, anyway.
Remember the whole Slot-1/Slot-A fiasco? Intel developed the PII with a slot connector, and used patents/copyrights/trademarks/whatever to prevent AMD or any other CPU manufacturer to make pin-compatible CPUs. AMD then developed the Athlon to use exactly the same connector, although with different electrical specifications and pin definition. This move was aimed to facilitate the manufacturers' development and time-to-market efforts, never to give power to the end-user.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned this and everybody is easily misleaded into thinking this issue is not a important one. Maybe this shows just how few hardware development we have in the West.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
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.
In all seriousness, in 3 years if things continue... falling prices, endusers not buying into the upgrade cycle, AMD and Intel undercutting each other, video cards outpacing CPU's...
3 years may be about the right time to bail from the PC (meaning intel) market and focus strictly on the exploding embedded markets...
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
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...
Hell, most Intel CPUs are not pin compatible with other Intel CPUs.
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