Collected By Robert R. Collins

Week of November 25, 2001

Older News

Intel patent suit against Broadcom goes to court

By Bloomberg News

November 27, 2001
SiliconValley.com

The case puts Broadcom's $1 billion-a-year chip business in jeopardy. The trial is one of two scheduled by U.S. District Judge Roderick McKelvie in Delaware. The second will deal with three other Intel patents.

VIA says wins an Intel patent infringement ruling

By Reuters

November 27, 2001
Globe Technology

In a brief statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, VIA said the U.S. federal court in northern California had ruled the Taiwan firm did not infringe on an Intel patent regarding a "fast write" feature for graphics chips.

Intel picks up pace in bus, DDR333 chipset race

By Jack Robertson

November 26, 2001
EBN

Intel will move the rollout of its 533MHz microprocessor frontside bus (FSB) to the second quarter of 2002, a quarter earlier than expected. The company has set its upcoming 845E PC chipset on a similarly stepped-up timetable in what observers say is an effort to head off competition from Taiwan's chipset manufacturers.

Compaq, Intel Fix Itanium Problem

By Edward F. Moltzen

November 27, 2001
CRN

The companies "resolved the issue" after they made a "BIOS modification to make an Itanium configuration change," according to a Compaq spokesman. The remedy--which the Compaq spokesman said will enable the server vendor to begin shipping Itanium systems shortly--will now be recommended by Intel on all multiprocessor systems.

Intel Pentium 4 Supplies May Fall Short on PC Demand

By Alan Patterson

November 28, 2001
Bloomberg.com

"You will see tighter supplies of the Pentium 4,'' Intel spokeswoman Evia Shum said in an interview in Hong Kong. "We are trying to remedy a tight situation at the end of this quarter.''

Some PC makers will have to wait as Intel boosts output to meet demand for its latest processor, Shum said. She declined to give details on which types of the processor are in greatest demand or which customers are being put on hold.

New Intel Technology May Clear Way for Faster Chips

By Ken Popovich

November 27, 2001
eWeek

Next week, Intel Corp. will tout a new technology it has developed to overcome those hurdles.

Intel researchers have come up with a new design for the transistor, the key component at the heart of all integrated circuits. To make faster processors, chipmakers have shrunk transistors—which basically operate like tiny on/off switches—to enable them to operate at a higher frequency and to make them easier to pack onto a silicon die.

Infineon freed from future Rambus DDR lawsuits

By Tony Smith

November 27, 2001
The Register

Judge Robert Payne issued the permanent injunction against Rambus in response to a request from Infineon.

Judge Payne presided over Rambus' legal assault on Infineon in the Virginia District Court earlier this year - and Infineon's counter-action, which alleged the memory maker committed fraud by failing to reveal its intellectual property rights to the JEDEC committee working on a industry-wide standard from single-data-rate SDRAM.

Judge postpones Hynix Rambus patent suit

By James Watson

November 22, 2001
The Register

The court indicated that Hynix's case may be postponed indefinitely pending resolution of Rambus' appeal to the US Federal Circuit regarding its case against Infineon, as the two cases cover mutual territory.

In May, a similar case involving Micron was delayed until October so that a resolution with the Infineon lawsuit could be found. In September Rambus requested the case be delayed until 2003.

VIA beats off Intel legal attack

By Tony Smith

November 26, 2001
The Register

Last week, Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for Northern California threw out Intel's claim that VIA had infringed its rights by implementing AGP Fast Write mode.

Intel maintained that Fast Write was an extension of its AGP specification, and that VIA's support for it went beyond its licence to use the basic standard.

Intel pressuring Compaq over AMD?

By Mike Magee

November 27, 2001
The Inquirer

HardOCP - were you down earlier today guys? - has a piece about building your own gas mask from chicken parts which a chap called Blair told them about. It's Here.

Herr Pabster's site compares some KT266A boards to some Nforce stuff and concludes that the Via offering wins hand down.

AMD's secret chipset business

By Eva Glass

November 24, 2001
The Inquirer

Take, as an instance, the piece first reported on Extremehardware and picked up by Mageek about AMD "exiting" and then "not exiting" the chipset business.

Mike missed one big chipset push that AMD is currently contemplating and it's all to do with HyperTransport again.

ATi's chipset directions

By Fuad Abazovic

November 24, 2001
The Inquirer

ATI will attack the Nforce market just like Nvidia has attacked the mobile graphic market with its Geforce 2 go and the NV17M no name product.

Of course ATi is joining the Athlon market as well as cheerleading the Pentium 4 - and AMD told the INQUIRER earlier that "whoever wants to make an Athlon chipset can do so".

SiS and its Pentium 4 wins

By Fuad Abazovic

November 26, 2001
The Inquirer

There's a list of recent customers that have adopted its Pentium 4 chipset on its Website and these are major names.

Of course, SiS has a licence to build Pentium 4 chipsets from Intel itself and therefore pays a little cash for each chipset it sells.

Via's graphic plans

By Fuad Abazovic

November 24, 2001
The Inquirer

Seven months, ago we were one of the first one to report about a mysterious card that was hidden behind the codename Columbia.

We originally said that this card was scheduled for spring 2002 but a few things have changed in their plans. We heard several times that Via bought S3 because of its Intel licences and their main goal was to have stable drivers and not necessarily the fastest cards or graphic chipsets.

Intel Xeon multi-processing chip to ship next month

By Tony Smith

November 27, 2001
The Register

Big Blue yesterday unveiled its x360 server, which will be based on four Xeon MP chips running at 1.5GHz or 1.6GHz. Both versions will begin shipping in December, the company said.

The official debut of the Xeon MP will take place in January, according to Intel's internal roadmap. The 0.18 micron processor, which is based on the Pentium 4 core but features between 512KB and 1MB of on-die L3 cache, was originally to have been launched last October, but Intel delayed the part, claiming that it needed "further validation".