Slashdot Mirror
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...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
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.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
From the article, 11 legal suits are involved which reference 27 different patents from either side.
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...
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'
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.
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.
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.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
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!!!
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...