[NEWS] - VIA and Intel settle lawsuits

[CougTek]

Intel Corporation and VIA Technologies, Inc. have reached a settlement agreement in a series of pending patent lawsuits related to chipsets and microprocessors. The agreement encompasses 11 pending cases in five countries involving 27 patents.

Under terms of the settlement both companies will dismiss all pending legal claims in all jurisdictions. The companies also entered into a ten-year patent cross license agreement covering each company's products. As part of the agreement Intel granted VIA a license to sell microprocessors that are compatible with the x86 instruction set but not pin compatible or bus compatible with Intel microprocessors.

Intel further agreed for a period of three years, not to assert its patents on VIA bus or pin compatible microprocessors. Intel also granted VIA a four year license to design and sell chip sets that are compatible with the Intel microprocessor bus and agreed not to assert its patents on VIA or its customers or distributors on such chip sets for a fifth year. The agreement will be royalty bearing to Intel for some products. The license agreements do not apply to S3 Graphics, a company partially owned by VIA.

Each company is responsible for its own attorney's fees.

We'll probably witness a boom of VIA-based motherboards for the Pentium 4 platform as a result of the agreement. Expect Pentium 4 chipsets prices to drop too.

Bottom line : good news for the customers.

 

[Jan Kivar]

Hopefully VIA's coming Intel-chipsets don't suck as much as they do with AMD. But, most likely the chipsets will have just the same southbridges as AMD ones.

Jan

 

[blakerwry]

As part of the agreement Intel granted VIA a license to sell microprocessors that are compatible with the x86 instruction set but not pin compatible or bus compatible with Intel microprocessors.

does this mean we will not see the C3 in a few years? That's too bad, I loved seeing a lower cost alternative to intell processors while still having the option of upgrading to them in the future.

 

[Tea]

If VIA have got half a brain, they will use the same sockets as AMD.

 

[Mercutio]

The EV6 bus used by AMD chips is Intel intellectual property by way of HP by way of Compaq by way of DEC.

In short, that ain't gonna hold either.

 

[Howell]

The EV6 bus used by AMD chips is Intel intellectual property by way of HP by way of Compaq by way of DEC.

In short, that ain't gonna hold either.

I don't buy it.

If Intel owned the EV6 intelectual property, why would they license it to AMD? I would think they would withhold a license like they did back in the day with the GTL+ and AGTL protocols that Intel themselves use. At least originally AMD licensed EV6 directly from DEC. If this license comes up for renewal every so often I would think Intel would pull it.

One advantage of the EV6 protocol is that is only defines CPU to chip communications. Thus, chipset companies are free to be creative with the pipelines to memory and the PCI bus besides that these pipeines are now not shared.

Jan could be correct; if VIA was smart enough to think ahead. IMHO, licensing the EV6 bus protocol has enabled to be what it is today. A marvelous coup.

 

[Howell]

BTW, Back in the day the reports were that the EV6 would top out at 400MHz (200MHz DDR).

AMD has lots of interesting stuff in store for the future.

AMD-8000™ Series Chipsets
Integrated DDR DRAM
AMD HyperTransport™ Technology

 

[Mercutio]

Alpha went to EV7 for 533MHz, IIRC

Were I in the position of licensing the technology for the processor technology I was betting billions of dollars of engineering and fab work on, I'd at least license that technology for as long as practical. 8 years? 10 years? A long time.

Were I a struggling technology (or business group therein) company with a high-end product no one was buying, I'd look at somone wanting a long license for an ancillary technology as a nice little chunk of revenue, particularly if a next generation product would soon be available that would obsolete that ancillary technology for my own needs.

I don't think my scenario is unlikely.

 

[Howell]

I don't think my scenario is unlikely.

I must have missed your points of contention because we seem to be agreeing down the line.