You won't believe this one......as if AMD doesn't have enough competitors:
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Russian computer chip gets banker, says beats Intel
By Peter Henderson
MOSCOW, Nov 24 (Reuters) - British investment bank Robert Flemings said on Wednesday it hoped to nail down funding by the middle of next year for Russian computer engineers who say they have developed a microprocessor that beats anything in the West.
The engineers, who developed computers operating Soviet missile defences, say their E2K chip runs several times faster than a chip in development by Intel Corp <INTC.O> and could roll off assembly lines in three years if they can secure funding.
But the Russian team, Elbrus International, has not made an E2K chip yet -- it has designed and run simulations.
Elbrus engineers say their chip, based on ones developed by the same team for the Soviet Union's military complex, will be fast and cheap, though a factory might cost well over a billion dollars to build.
Flemings is looking to attract at least the $60 million needed to finish engineering and develop prototype chips and is looking ideally for a strategic investor. So far the Elbrus team has used its own money from other work to develop the chip.
"Ideally you would expect the deal to crystallise somewhere in the middle of next year," Vladimir Zamai, associate director of investment banking at Flemings's Moscow unit, Fleming UCB, told reporters after a news conference.
"You are talking about a company that could have market capital of billions of dollars with this kind of IP (intellectual property)," said UCB Fleming investment banking Director Alexei Matveyev.
"In two or three years -- it is quite realistic."
Elbrus has been looking for funding for at least a year. Initial suspicion eased after a February article in trade journal Microprocessor Report.
It said Elbrus's estimates for the E2K chip were faster than Microprocessor Report's estimate for Intel's Merced chip, in development. But it said the E2K had not been completely tested.
The E2K is based on a type of parallel processing which breaks down tasks -- widely used in Soviet defence computers.
"Of course there is a stereotype now that if something is not begun in America, it is not real," lead engineer Boris Babayan told reporters. "The second problem is that the market is so strongly monopolised."
Elbrus does software work for Sun Microsystems <SUNW.O>, which has declined to finance the chip.
Patents for the chip are held by Cayman Islands-based Elbrus International, which in turn is held by Cayman-based Elbrus Services, controlled by the Russian engineers.
Flemings said the company took the decision to register offshore because of poor intellectual property protection under Russian law.
13:48 11-24-99
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