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Intel, Intergraph Settle In Hyperthreading Suit
Sir Pallas writes "Intel settled a patent infringement suit over SSE and Hyperthreading for $225mil with Intergraph. Furthermore, Dell, also named in the suit, claims that their indemnity agreement with Intel applies in this case and requires Intel to take any bullets headed Dell's way." Update: 03/31 17:49 GMT by T : philthedrill writes "The Intel/Intergraph article title is incorrect. Technically," (according to this story at out-law.com), "Intel/Dell and Intergraph settled a longstanding suit which dealt with Itanium (not SSE/Hyperthreading). Another company, MicroUnity, is now suing Intel and Dell over SSE and Hyperthreading."
The Integraph suit deals with Itanium stuff, as is stated here. The SSE/Hyperthreading suit is another company (MicroUnity) and another suit (same article).
Now, from what I understand, MicroUnity's MediaProcessor is a fine-grained multithreaded processor. There's limited information here and here, which may be the processor with the alleged patents that have been infringed upon. But what about University of Washington's SMT group? They put out their first paper in 1995. The Alpha EV8 (21464), before it got canned, was supposed to have SMT (and the Alpha group went from Digital to Compaq and then to Intel). I'm speculating that Intel got Hyperthreading from Alpha who got it from Washington. DEC/Compaq worked with Washington's SMT group, as Luiz Barroso is listed on the Washington SMT page (interestingly, he works for Google now. His Google article is quite interesting).
Intergraph claims that after several years of mutually beneficial work, in 1996 Intel began making unreasonable demands for royalty-free rights to Intergraph patents already being used in Intel microprocessors. When Intergraph refused, Intel abused its monopoly power by engaging in a series of illegal coercive actions intended to force Intergraph to give Intel access to the patents.
With no other source of suitable high-end processors available and with its hardware business under serious threat because of Intel's actions, Intergraph sought court protection by filing a lawsuit on November 17, 1997. The lawsuit asserts claims against Intel in three areas: illegal coercive behavior, patent infringement, and antitrust violations.