Via Agrees To End Legal Squabble With Intel
(07/05/00, 9:06 p.m. ET) By Jack Robertson , Electronic Buyers' News
Intel and Via Technologies late Wednesday settled a lawsuit over chipset technology, a deal under which Via once again will be licensed to produce certain chipsets that support Pentium III and Celeron microprocessors.
All civil suits filed by Intel (stock: INTC) against the chip maker in the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore, as well as a complaint lodged with the U.S. International Trade Commission will be dropped. Via in turn will pay Intel an unspecified lump sum and royalty fees.
The Taiwan-based IC house, whose share of the global chipset market has mushroomed to between 50 percent and 60 percent, could improve its position even more by clearing its legal dispute with Intel.
The settlement comes only two weeks after Intel unveiled its long-anticipated 815 chipset, which supports PC133 SDRAM memory and APG4X graphics capability and is designed to compete against Via's Apollo Pro133 chipset. It was Intel's initial decision to leave out PC133 from its chipset line in favor of all-out support for Direct Rambus DRAM that allowed Via to so successfully fill the industry vacuum for an SDRAM-enabled device.
Neither company Wednesday would say if the license agreement covered pending Via chipsets that will communicate with double-data-rate SDRAM in Pentium III-based desktop PCs.
Again, Intel is without a chipset that supports the DDR SDRAM main memory that will be used by next-generation desktops -- while Via and rival IC makers are readying DDR-enabled core-logic components to work with Intel processors and the higher speed memory.
Sources said now that Intel has settled its legal spat, the company might welcome Via and other chipset independents to tie their DDR-enabled products into Pentium III-based desktops.
A bevy of DDR chipsets will hit the market this fall with support for the Advanced Micro Devices (stock: AMD) Athlon desktop chip, and without a DDR-equipped chipset of its own, Intel might need Via and the other independents to compete in that segment. |
