Intel in total control, they run it all!
Friday August 17 11:17 AM EDT
<<<<Intel warns PC makers to avoid Via chip set>>>
By Ken Popovich, eWEEK
Intel Corp. (INTC - news), in its ongoing dispute with Via Technologies Inc., of Taiwan, is warning computer makers to steer clear of a new chip set from Via that could enable the manufacturers to build cheaper Pentium 4-based PCs by enabling them to use a less costly high-speed memory technology.
Intel claims that Via does not have the necessary licensing for its Apollo P4X266 chip set.
Intel representatives have privately cautioned PC and motherboard manufacturers in the United States and overseas against using the product, saying it could draw them into a costly legal battle, said sources with some of those companies.
Intel has repeatedly taken Via to court over licensing disputes and currently is pursuing a lawsuit involving chip sets designed by Via for use with Athlon processors made by rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD - news)
The chip set Via released this week is the first designed to pair the Pentium 4 with a new high-speed memory technology called double-data-rate synchronous DRAM (DDR SDRAM), rather than Rambus DRAM.
According to Intel, Rambus offers the best performance. However, critics say the technology is too expensive and that DDR, the next generation of SDRAM, offers competitive performance for about half the cost.
Pricing has become a key issue this year as Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., and PC makers struggle through an industrywide slump.
Hitting the sweet spot
Amid weaker-than-expected sales of the Pentium 4, Intel has announced it will release an SDRAM chip set next month and a DDR product early next year. The move to cheaper non-Rambus memory will lower manufacturing costs, enabling PC makers to offer Pentium 4-based systems closer to the $800 to $1,000 price range that's considered the "sweet spot" of the market.
But with Via releasing its DDR chip set now, the company, which holds about a 35 percent share of the world chip set market, stands to reap financial rewards by beating Intel to the market by several months.
Following Via's announcement this week, Intel claimed the company is not authorized to sell the product.
"They are not licensed to sell products that are compatible with the Pentium 4," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.
Mulloy would not say whether Intel was warning its business partners to avoid using Via's product, saying only that "those discussions are typically very private." However, a Via representative confirmed that companies had reported such incidences to them.
"Yes, they told us this was happening. Certainly the pressure is very intense right now," said Richard Brown, Via's marketing director, reached at the company's headquarters in Taipei. "But I think you'll start to see motherboards come out very soon. There are customers that we are talking to, and we're very confident you'll see our product on the market."
Brown declined to discuss the licensing controversy, saying only that Via was "comfortable with this."
Overall, he said, Intel will likely benefit from Via's new chip set because it'll enable computer makers to offer customers more choices and will help lower the cost of building Pentium 4 PCs.
"You can't just keep on slashing the cost of the CPU. You have got to reduce the cost of the overall platform," Brown said, referring to Intel's aggressive price cutting on its processors this year. "The key for the industry as a whole is for the successful rollout of the Pentium 4 processor platform. We think it's in everyone's interest to work together on this." |
