To Arno & all re WSJ piece for tomorrow.
The tone of the piece is relatively negative vis-a vis DEC. Covers most of stuff already talked about on the thread, ie. desperation, Merced vs Alpha, the unusual blindsiding (relatively rare in patent infringement cases), the potential problems for DEC being Intel's customers, Intel's history of vigorously defending itself, cross-licensing, etc. One interesting item though is this excerpt :
Quote
Richard Belgard, an independent consultant in Saratoga, Calif., has examined Digital's patents and said he believes the case has merit. He said that Intel's solution for dealing with one of the nastiest bottlenecks in microprocessor design bears great resemblance to Digital's. Mr. Belgard said Digital was early in developing a technique called branch prediction, where a chip must choose between two different paths depending on answers to a certain "yes or no" calculation.
Digital's Alpha chips don't wait for the answer. Instead, they make a guess at which answer is right, then proceed along the path. If the answer comes and it is right, the result is a huge boost in processing speed. If wrong, the chip resets and proceeds upon the correct path.
"These are real patents, not toys," Mr. Belgard said. "Intel has been blindsided. But it's clear DEC is in survival mode."
Unquote
Rich Habib |
