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Motorola sues Intel
Numeric writes "
Motorola sues Intel. Apparently, Intel is attempting to herd former Motorola employees to work for them. Motorola is greatly concerned that those employees will be disclosing their knowledge of the PowerPC chip design. "
More proof of the Wintel mafia.
Though Linux thugs tend to put Linux in a similar position.
This type of lawsuit is ridiculous. If someone wants to move from Motorola to Intel, they should be able to without hinderance.
Nope.
This whole notion of "raiding" as an "illegal practice" is as ridiculous as NDAs in general. I've never heard of an NDA being succesfully enforced in court - its just legal mumbo jumbo to protect bad companies from competition.
Ever heard of intelectual property?
Motorola should just bite the bullet and admit that Intel has completely killed them in the general CPU market segment - with inferior products at that. Even IBM has dumped Motorola as a partner.
Oh, that's news since IBM is real tight with everyone.
Motorola used to be a blue chip company that was a sure winner. Now they're just lame. Nokia is killing them in cell phones, and Intel is destroying them in ICs.
Both Intel and Nokia has inferior products,
just like Linux is compared to OpenBSD.
It's sad that it's not the features that counts but the hype. (Not a Linux/OpenBSD flamebait btw, just facts.)
Even IBM has dumped Motorola as a partner.
That's news to me. Last I checked, Motorolla was in on IBM's "G4" chip.
Motorola used to be a blue chip company that was a sure winner. Now they're just lame. Nokia is killing them in cell phones, and Intel is destroying them in ICs.
Strange. I see Motorolla IC's in everything. ICs aren't just CPUs and Intel isn't the only one making them.
This type of lawsuit is ridiculous. If someone wants to move from Motorola to Intel, they should be able to without hinderance.
It's a free country. If Motorolla wants to sue Intel, they "should be able to without hinderance."
*Where do people like this come from, and why are they reading SlashDot?*
-UniDyne
Considering the difference in corporate cultures between Motorola and Intel, it says something that people are LEAVING Motorola!! Or it could be the fact that they laid off 10k people. They should thank Intel for taking the people they would otherwise fire within the next year (if their current trend is any indicator).
As if any inside info their engineers have would be useful, anyway...
You'd think they'd learn...
Motorola only dismissed people from the semiconducter areas, just like every other
semiconducter production group has been doing. A majority of these people took voluntary severence packages that were hella' generous IMO.
SEMICONDUCTOR!!! What the hell do you think the PowerPC is? A cellphone?!
Actually, what happened over the last few weeks is that IBM agreed to supposrt AltiVec. They may not use it in every chip they make, but the "crisis" is over.
MOT's been basically ignoring Somerset, it used to be the 'Elite' design center, but no more, the current head is more concerned with other places than the US.
The Tools and methodology used are nothing like Intel's, so there's going to be a lot of retraining by Intel to get these designers up to speed.
Intel has no use for the PowerPC architechture, it was designed by IBM in the'80s, its old stuff, like the X86, they need a late'90s design, that's not PowerPC. Mot went with the PPC arch not for its technical excellence, but for its marketing attractions , IE IBM.. The Moto 88110 architecture was much better than PPC, but no-one wanted to write code for it since there was no other backing than Apple (and Next)
Face it, the glory days of Somerset are long over, designers want to work on hot new chips, Intel's got a whole new architecture coming out, its time to move...
All the lawsuit does is change the recruiting practices, 'you call us, we can't call you'
One thing is Moto and Intel recently cross-licensed all their patents, so Mot has to base this on 'Trade Secrets' now, very hard to prove that sort of case.
PowerPC is a semiconductor, and amd and intel are HIRING in the semiconductor areas...not laying off. Motorola is laying off...cause the G3 is not getting results in the market.
Are you a mac user?
mac=moron
not as good as HP's 6-months of salary severance pacakage
you talk like macosrumors; out of your ass
... by just no firing these people.
It wouldn't be bad at all. You see, what MS did to Borland was suck away as much of their talent as possible as a way of crushing the competition without a) competing or b) buying the company. They did it to the Delphi group as well.
RedHat, on the other hand, could never hire enough of MS's workforce to significantly hinder MS's performance.
Most likely these designers are NOT going to be working on x86. They'll probably be working on StrongARM, which Intel got from DEC as part of the patent infringement settlement. Motorola's been losing people much more important to Motorola than designers to Intel already, ie software engineers. Designers think they're all the hot shit, but they're part of an organism. Remove your liver, and you die just as if you removed your brain, so to speak. Motorola has been bleeding like a stuck pig, losing people to other companies. Intel was just a little more blatant about it.
what happened? PowerPC never got marketed properly. Why?
RS/6000 you say?..where is it? How much? Does it run other OS than AIX?
So many years, still no software, no change.
Apple, IBM, and Motorola collaborate on the architecture/ design of the chips. This alliance is called AIM.
/390 machines and this (internal) market is even larger than the Mac market.
Motorola builds the G3 chips.
IBM owns the trademark to the term "PowerPC." This is not the same as having a patent for the chips themselves.
This is all correct, but IBM also builds several types of PPC chips, including G3s. Variations of PPC are used in IBM's AS/400 and
AFAIK both IBM and Motorola also have PPC chips for the embedded market which is HUGE. Actually Motorola built AltiVec primarily to take over the embedded and DSP markets (and they just about forced Intel out of those markets already), although Apple also had a hand in the design, and because of that Motorola's G4 will be a killer in the desktop market.
IBM's G4 will apparently be a 64-bit chip for the server market, although they're now saying they may be putting AltiVec units (plural!) in. This is smart, as AltiVec should speed up packet sorting, decryption/encryption, and similar server operations.
Intel probably wants those people for their ARM team, IMHO the x86 as an architecture is dead. Just look at the Pentium III, to what extremes they had to go to jack up the performance just a little... I wish A/I/M had a better team for designing the support chips, that's about the only area where Intel is technically better.
IBM originally spawned the development of the 600 family from the architecture of the ROMP/801 processor architecture. This was originally seen in the earlier IBM RS 6000 that had the 7 to 9 chip superscaler design (separate chips mount on the PCB formed the component model). Apple, Motorola and IBM formed a joint product development alliance to produce the 600 family. IBM supplied the architecture, Motorola the fabrication process, and Apple went along basically for the ride (Apple being very dependent on Motherola).
Hey, *I* work for Motorola! (waves hand in air) Ooh! Ooh! Buy *me*, buy *me*!
Oops, hit a little too close to home, did we...
Intel: Sorry we dont need any Mcore designers...
Microsoft is not worth a trial. Why no case against Intel business conducts and industry maker "influence". Software is not as important as hardware. Without hardware, no software. I may be wrong...
The previous poster makes the mistake of associating the embedded market without using Mircroprocessors. Not Microcontrollers or Embedded Controllers, which are high volume and low margin items. Motorola and IBM are big into high dollar, application specific embedded systems that use Microprocessors (i.e. VME, Compact PCI boards).
The FPU capabilities of the AltiVec make it a true supercomputer chip that, as stated, can do many things simultatiously. It can replace DSP chips, run concurrent communication protocols or be a fantastic General Purpose microprocessor with Vector capability. All are embedded systems.
The High Frequency clocking of the IBM systems allow servers to move data as fast as possible with little overhead. Servers are IBM's forte.
The G4 systems -- MaxMax (128 data/ 64 or 32 instruction) of Motorola is perfect for workstations and personal computers. The Power3 (256 data/ 64 instruction) of IBM is perfect for servers.
G4 is either. Don't think for a second though, that Apple is not a player. It is Apple that gives these companies an economy of scale for flagship processors that keeps the PowerPC on it's toes. They also help design state of the art ASIC chips.
Regarding Motorola: my opinion is that they are overlooking markets that they have the ability to dominate like Microprocessors. They have lost key people, but they can correct the situation by standing by the superior technology, provided that the people in control understand it.
I have never seen such gross incompetance as when I worked at Motorola SPS. Why are people leaving Moto? It's a suck place to work, that's why.
There are a lot of smart people there, but the really smart ones tend to get fed up and leave, not surprisingly...
Secondly, Moto can't market its way out of a paper bag. Cell phones and pagers are about all most people are aware of that Moto makes. A lot of this has to do with the fact that Moto's internal divisions have long been extremely independent, so there's been little company-wide planning or advertising.
And one last point...don't think this will mean the end of Moto, or anything like it. Moto is so much in bed with the federal government (and other governments) that they could almost stand to lose their entire consumer sector and just run on government expenditures alone. (ps Sorry if the formatting on this msg is messed up...)
I work for Motorola in the Semiconductor Sector. They didn't lay off people at PowerPC, in fact PowerPC is one of the few areas making money in Semiconductor. They laid off people from the embedded chips groups, which are every other group in Motorola Semiconductor except PowerPC.
Actually recruiters last fall were saying that Intel in Austin would be doing a Gigahertz processor design and that they were looking for about 20 key processor designers. Looks like they found them at PowerPC.
Intel is hitting a brick wall? Guess you don't talk to too many Intel engineers, or even read tech news. Pentium III IS a big step from Pentium II, once people start using those SIMD instructions. Those SIMD instructions are actually VERY efficient; what MMX should have been all along. They quite literally can double performance for certain instructions, and increase overall application performance by 20-30%. Not bad at all. Most new software is being built right now to take advantage of it because alot of it is actually worth using.
As for Merced, none of us really know WHAT that's going to be. I am sure Intel is quite aware of the AMD and Motorola competition. Don't be naive enough for a second to think that Merced is going to be a flop, in sales or performance.
I worked there 8 years , for RISC most of the time, it's a total 'Dilbert Zone', but it's not nearly as bad as Texas Instruments was... That was truly a horrible place...
I don't believe ANY of the people (now numbering about 15-20 total) that Intel hired from Motorola (including Mark McDermott) were fired from Moto. All were hired away directly from employment w/Motorola.
You figure it out...
Actually, many standard components of NDAs aren't legal. I've often wondered why companies aren't held liable for requiring employees to sign contracts that include illegal clauses; I suppose, though, that would mean that people wouldn't have to sue to enforce their rights. Then what would all those lawyers do for a living?
Just because Motorola can be _idiots_ doesn't change the fact that Intel desperately wants (out of their famous paranoia) to obliterate _all_ choice in the computer hardware industry. CPUs, chipsets, video cards, all will be Intel, or they might have to be _afraid_ or something. Should they manage to kill Motorola, AMD et al ad infinitum, they'll only turn to making it even more impossible for anybody to _ever_ produce an alternative. :)
What does Motorola's competence have to do with that? Though, interestingly, even my 195Mhz 604e does 400 bogomips, evidently the same bogomark as a PII 300 and beating an Ultrasparc. Wheee
The point is, Intel are ready and willing to fight as dirty as they can get away with and even a little (or a lot) more than that. They'll happily pull the MS ploy of buying people just to make sure other companies can't have them. They're probably cooking their books too since they're so paranoid and desperate. I know some insiders at Intel, and they are not _capable_ of doing good work anymore- the politics are absolutely disturbing there- all they're good for is killing other companies at this point.
They should be blown out of the way so others can start developing products unmolested. They will _not_ be blown out of the way, probably. However, they must not be allowed to choke the industry to death, OK? Tell me how many chipsets and video cards AMD makes. Intel is big enough to begin strangling the rest of the industry, and that's just what they're trying to do- the fact that they can't maintain a work environment that is conducive to innovation, the fact that they are running out of steam and facing a collapse of their effectiveness, is not relevant. They'll still be able to use their resources as a destructive weapon for some time, and that's what they mustn't be allowed to do.
Where is it written that 'among these rights to be held self-evident is the right of Intel to buy out, sabotage, steal from or otherwise obliterate any smaller competitor who frightens them by producing a better product?'
Posted by US Marine:
Intel is obviously hitting a brick wall with their legacy CISC technology. MERCED has been delayed once again, and their Pentium III is no better than the PII with some tweaks.
So what do they do? Steal from others, of course. Intel has learned lessons from Microsoft very well - "Money talks, and competition be damned. If we can't make it ourselves we will just buy out their engineer talent."
Posted by Nr9:
they never really completely split
i think nokia has better phones but mot definitely has better processors
mot startac sux like hell it always fails to read the card nokias have games
Posted by Nr9:
actually apple will obtain chips from both, ibm's own divisions aren't big enough to giv them money
There is nothing wrong with Mac hardware. It is superior or at least equal to PC hardware. The problem people seem to have is with the OS. It doesn't have the advanced features that a modern OS should have. I purchased a G3/300 (beige) about 3 weeks ago and have not crashed out of the OS once. This is true. The buzzwords are all fine and dandy (protected memory, pre-emptive multitasking, etc.) but the true measure of an OS is real-world stability. That also depends on the programs being run on it too. Developers may have issues programming for MacOS but that will change soon with the intro of MacOS X. Sure, I know its so-called "vaporware" at this time, so spare me your vapor accusations. Linux support is pretty much vapor with the big PC manufacturers also but its not being held against it.
I do aree with you on that the G4 will be a rocking chip. But the real G4 too look out for will be the 2nd revision of the chip. It will have a 128bit cache bus and 128bit MaxBus that will provide the most thruput of any chip that will be out there at the time. Look for it in late 99.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
They both design and manufacter the G3. They produce it differently though...
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
Thats got to be one of the most ignorant remarks ever posted on /. You, my friend, are greatly mistaken. Mac users are not morons and the G3 is certainly getting results in the market. Get a clue.
Sheesh...you give AC's a bad name.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
You are right about the boneheaded move they did by moving to NT on Intel. That was just stupid. It was a reaction to their losing thier MacOS license. This is what kids do...
They're worse than Apple was between 1990-96
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
Umm... wasn't the Z80 based on Intel's 8080 instruction set, with some more stuff added?
I do think PPC are far superior to anything that Intel has ever (or probably will ever) produce.
BUT -
Gee, losing all their employees to Intel?
Wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Motorola ditched their OWN CPU for internal use and replaced all their PCs with Intel-inside Dell computers.
Wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that PowerPC chips aren't selling to a very big market, because Morotola doesn't market them for shit. (remember the BEST PowerPC chip commercials you ever saw? they were from Apple, not Motorola. Moto just sits on their asses making chips.)
Motorola's shit is definately not in the same locality. They make a great CPU, but as far as other matters of business go - they seem to have their sphincters around their necks.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It was probably looked over by a different "author" (or even the same one who changed his/her mind) and discarded the first time around. Don't take it personally (or do take it personally; I don't care..)
It's just The Way Things Work (tm).
I never was totally impressed with Motorola. I bought a voice modem, the modem part broke, sent it in, they took off the external 'voice' jacks, put in the wrong firmware. when a lightning broke it a second time, I asked them to put the jacks back in, to no avail.
The 68xx chips weren't all that wonderful, but the included dev environment was nice.
I have never owned a Mot cpu or uc.
they aren't whats make them look lame is what geos with hem (ie Mac Machines, with crappy macos and crappy-buggy Intel chipsets on the MB). Other bad thing for the Power PC has a general use chip is that it is too strongly thight to IBM and Apple (remmember the wars Apple/ibm in the 80's). The chip itself IS great
Have you ever tried to do asm on an Intel Chip and on a Motorola one ? intel sux , you are restricted on the use of the registers, their number is limited.
The future of the mainstream PC is tied to the x86 architecture which imho has reached is limits. And changing to IA 64 is going to be painfull so Intel seeks people with experience in that Field Mot's employees. ALso ALtivec to be released with the G4's chip rocks a lot more than MMX or Katmai so Intel wants to get that technology to say Hey look what we've done .....
none Yet.
Uh, this was announced last summer, 6/98. IBM and Motorola will still colaborate on PowerPC design with different chips for different tasks. According to news reports, both Motorola and IBM chips will still be compatible, except Mot's will have Altivec and IBM won't. Personally, I think the specialized chip concept is rather cool. Altivec for games and multimedia apps, and 64-bit power for high-end computation and server work. Just my 2.
Scott Banwart
---
Better to stay silent, and let people think
you're an idiot than to open your mouth and
In most jobs of a competative nature, not only are NDA's enforced, but also Non Compete agreements....This prevents a employee from taking job with competing firm/company for a specified period of time, usually 2-3 years. Perfectly legal, and enforcable. Considered espionage by most, it is perfectly reasonable. I am not saying I like it, since I get really pissed when someone tells me I can't do something. But if a company pays to train and educate, and the employee posesses sensitive knowledge, I can see where that would be a problem.
Oh yeah, IBM and Motorola are still tight, and actually seem to be getting along better now....
Who is the master of foxhounds, and who says the hunt has begun? -Pink Floyd
this lawsuit IS ridonkuless. it is based on people not being able to change jobs. if intelluctual property is stolen that is another issue (and should be addressed accordingly), but to say that former moto employees can't go work for intel is craziness.
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
i bet it wouldn't be so bad if it were about people leaving MS to go work at Redhat, would it?
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
Intel is very powerful. The easiest way to criple a competitor is to raid R&D. They benefit by acquiring expertise on competing technology and by removing key employers from their competitors.
M$ gutted several mac companies several years ago. It is a very effective practice.
The PowerPC is a well engineered chip and it is to our benifit that it continues to evolve. Competition is good in the marketplace. And besides, as programmers you have to appreciate a well designed piece of equipment.
-b
Look at it this way...
You have your brand new start up firm. You and one employee(to keep it simple). Lets call this little company Transmetta for the sake of argument. You come up with this brillient idea, that will totally reshape the industry(lets call it a quantum CPU). You tell your one employee all the details. Intel finds out your working on something big. Intel offers this employee millions in benifits and pay. He defects. How much do you trust your quantum CPU secrets with the only othere person in the world hwo knows about them, whos now over at Intel???
Ive signed non-compete agreements in the past, and i feel its perfectly allright. Ive know a lot of sensitive information and business practices that would sure help some compettitors, but look at the company you would be leaving, and how much time and resources were poured into this stuff, and it seems only fair. You may not even think about it when you go to another company. You know all this stuff, and it will eventually come out or affect your work. I think 2-3years is good.
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
This type of lawsuit is ridiculous. If someone wants to move from Motorola to Intel, they should be able to without hinderance.
This whole notion of "raiding" as an "illegal practice" is as ridiculous as NDAs in general. I've never heard of an NDA being succesfully enforced in court - its just legal mumbo jumbo to protect bad companies from competition.
Motorola should just bite the bullet and admit that Intel has completely killed them in the general CPU market segment - with inferior products at that. Even IBM has dumped Motorola as a partner.
Motorola used to be a blue chip company that was a sure winner. Now they're just lame. Nokia is killing them in cell phones, and Intel is destroying them in ICs.
Ever heard of intelectual property?
Call it what you want - just find me one recent substantial judgement supporting an NDA.
Oh, that's news since IBM is real tight with everyone.
Read the news sometime - they split on PowerPC last week. Duh.
Both Intel and Nokia has inferior products
...that are destroying Motorola in the market.
Motorola is pursuing 32 bit Alitvec as a strategic design improvement - IBM is pushing for 64 bit chips that are better suited for AS/400 and Mainframes.
They have bailed out of Somerset.
Apple will obtain chips from Motorola, and IBM will supply its own divisions.
This isn't my "opinion" - it all happened in the last few weeks.
When will these ludicrous lawsuits end. Maybe I'm just clueless but was Intel supposed to have headhunters calling McDonald's to see if any chip designers wanted to change jobs.
Seems Motorola has a problem keeping key people and their solution to the problem is to sue any company that has the gaul to offer their people better jobs.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
uh, since when did ibm dump moto?
inferiour? is that why it has 4 times the number of registers? yes, i know risc on the inside (remember when all the x86 zealots said risc sucked?) and it has more internal registers, but that's almost as slow as cache; the compiler can still only control what's in 8 of them, the rest are up to the cpu's own cache like use of the remaining registers. if that's not enough, just look at the x86 mem arch. enjoy shift registers?
shit happenes.
i guess everyone just wants their 15 seconds of slashdot fame
jeez, i must've submitted this like a week ago. i'm not saying that somebody didn't get it in before me but if so why the delay?
It's called a 'Moratorium' when you cannot work for a competitor for a certain amount of time..
.. "Really? Well, I'm sorry, but if I have to sign this document, I'm not working for you. Thanks."
;-)
;)
And they are most definitely legal. However:
They MUST be accompanied by compensation for the moratorium. That is, if you cannot work for another company in your field for a year after you leave Foo.com, then Foo.com MUST compensate you during that time. In other words, if they don't pay, you don't have to play. The compensation can take the form of anything, as long as it is worth the price you will pay for being out of the market for a year, and potentially not even able to work for that time.
I have refused jobs based on the NDA. It's always the same story.. "It's just standard procedure. Everybody signs them."
A company that is so paranoid that it needs to propagate unenforcable NDA's to make themselves feel better, is a company I would avoid working for.. long term, anyway.
Is anyone else bothered by the intellectual property clauses as well? What I do at home is my own property, as far as I am concerned. I have refused to sign docs that had those sorts of things in them as well. "We own everything that you do that relates to our business." Umm... what? What's that? I don't think so, bubba.
I have no problem handing over things that I do with company resources, and on company time. Those are rightfully theirs. But if I do it at home, on my own time, nope. And I won't sign a document that says otherwise. If that costs me a job or two, so be it. I'm more than happy to fill the time with other work.
So.. the moral? If you really need the job, sign in vanishing ink. You'll thank me later.
---
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Freedom."
Is it Motorola or IBM? I always thought it was Motorola, but anytime I see PowerPC used, there's always a disclaimer about "PowerPC is a registered trademark of International Business Machines" (look at the bottom of LinuxPPC's home page, for example).
Does Motorola just manufacture the chip that IBM designs?
I never hear anything about Motorola. With the speed of the G3/G4, and with AltiVec too, I would think more people would be talking about them... but I never hear anything. I remember seeing ads for their "DigitalDNA" a couple of months ago, but that's about it.
Why don't we ever hear anything from them?
rooooar
When are they going to sue Intel for ripping off the Z80?
--
Beef
"Raging Moderate" of the
Microsoft did the same thing to Borland Corps C++ people. Offering them fancy trips and large signing bonuses and placing them illegally in the same positions in Microsoft. Basically brain drained borland.... It it illegal as most companies make employees sign agreements they won't take the same position in a competing firm...
This stiffles competion and is bad for the whole business as a rule.
...and by ZiLOG not Motorola.
I can still remember the great days of the amiga
;>
using the awesome motorola 68000 chip.
This just proves that intel wants to learn all of the stuff motorolas chips do.
Man... where did I put all those amiga disks.. I think I'm gonna download UAE again
If I've understood correctly....
Apple, IBM, and Motorola collaborate on the architecture/ design of the chips. This alliance is called AIM.
Motorola builds the G3 chips.
IBM owns the trademark to the term "PowerPC." This is not the same as having a patent for the chips themselves.
Read the news sometime - they split on PowerPC last week. Duh.
Actually they split last June, but maintained a limited partnership until their latest single silicone solution was completed.
CISC is awesome for programmers, but sucks for speed. The reverse is true for RISC. We need something that has the best of both worlds.