Here's the continuing story...
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VIA Taunts Intel With New PC133 Pentium Chipset.
Computergram International, July 20, 1999 pNA
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Against the background of impending litigation from Intel Corp, VIA Technologies Inc has introduced its first Pentium-compliant chipset that supports the PC133 specification. The Apollo is also the first chipset to be manufactured under VIA's recent foundry deal with National Semiconductor Corp.
PC133, the memory specification that VIA has championed as a real-world alternative to Intel's preferred Rambus chips, refers to the increase in operating speed of a PC's front-side-bus (FSB) and memory bus from 100MHz to 133MHz. VIA says that support for PC133 SDRAM delivers up to a 33% increase in memory performance over PC100 types. The chipset, which will also be available in 66MHz and 100MHz versions, supports Pentium III, II and Celeron CPUs.
However, as far as Intel is concerned, VIA and NatSemi are on distinctly shaky legal ground with the production of the new chipset. Intel started a patent infringement suit against VIA and revoked the Taiwanese chip design house's x86 technology license in late June. VIA has tried to circumvent this action by buying NatSemi's Cyrix x86 PC processor unit and signing NatSemi as a foundry partner. According to Intel, NatSemi's x86 license is exclusive and cannot be passed to VIA. Chuck Malloy, Intel's legal spokeperson said that as far as his company was concerned VIA and NatSemi can't make the chipset. Asked if NatSemi would be dragged into the VIA lawsuit, Malloy replied that he was "certain they'll be part of the case in some form or fashion." No dates have yet been set for the hearing.
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Trident slaps suit on design partner Via.
(Trident Microsystems, Via Technologies)(Company Business and Marketing)
Electronic Buyers' News, July 26, 1999 p5
Author
Hachman, Mark
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Silicon Valley- With friends like these ...
Graphics-chip maker Trident Microsystems Inc. last week sued its design partner, Via Technologies Inc., charging the company with breach of contract, fraud, and patent infringement.
The suit is the latest crack in the facade of a block of companies whose common goal was to provide an alternative to Intel Corp.'s architecture-a group whose principal members include Via, Trident, Acer Laboratories Inc., and National Semiconductor Corp.
Trident's suit, filed in federal court in Santa Clara, Calif., charges Via with breaking the carefully orchestrated marketing arrangement that existed between the companies' jointly designed products. It also alleges that Via illegally lured away 25 Trident engineers to its own design team.
Representatives at Via's U.S headquarters in Fremont, Calif., said they were aware of Trident's suit, but had not formed a response by press time.
Executives at Trident, based in Mountain View, Calif., said the company had a deal with Via under which Trident integrated its CyberBlade graphics core into two of Via's chipsets-the MVP4 and ProMedia. Under the agreement, Via was supposed to market the MVP4 and ProMedia to desktop PC customers. Trident, meanwhile, which sells most of its graphics ICs into the portable-computing market, was granted access to Via's core-logic technology and designed its own parts-the CyberBlade i7 and i1-for notebook-PC OEMs.
"We believe Via violated that fundamental market direction," said Gerry Liu, Trident's senior vice president of marketing.
Liu said the Via agreement has led to "complaints and confusion" on the part of Trident's customers, who are unsure from which company they are supposed to buy their chipsets. Liu also said Via violated a separate agreement under which the companies were supposed to share revenue and profits from chipset sales. And law-enforcement agencies in Taiwan have searched Via offices used by the former Trident employees, looking for documents that may prove Via used illegal hiring practices, Liu added.
In its suit, Trident is seeking to halt sales of Via's MVP4 and ProMedia chipsets, and will ask for $200 million in punitive damages plus unspecified actual damages.
The Trident complaint marks Via's second legal entanglement in less than a month. After charging Via with breaking terms of a P6 bus license by including a 133-MHz frontside bus in its new Apollo Pro 133 chipset, Intel filed suit against the company in a San Jose federal court.
Via has since tried to exploit a legal loophole, manufacturing its P6-based chipsets at National Semiconductor by piggybacking on a separate licensing agreement National has with Intel. Additionally, Via earlier this month bought National's discrete microprocessor subsidiary, Cyrix Corp., which has been one of Intel's chief rivals.
Via also has signed separate deals with graphics makers S3 Inc. and Trident for integrated chipsets. In advance of its suit, Trident signed a deal on Wednesday with one of Via's rivals, which sources said was Acer Labs.
The flurry of licensing deals is indicative of a trend among chipset makers to seek out partners in the graphics industry with which to develop integrated products. This phenomenon is being driven by the popularity of low-cost PCs, which have forced chip suppliers to develop integrated parts to lower their bill-of-materials cost.
Save for San Jose's 3Dfx Interactive Inc., every other mainstream PC graphics company has signed a deal to integrate its cores into a third-party core-logic chipset. Although Nvidia Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., has so far not publicly disclosed its own integration plans, the company hired Kenneth Ma away from Trident to become senior director of its integrated business. In an interview, Ma called the integration of graphics and core logic "inevitable."
Copyright [copyright] 1999 CMP Media Inc.
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1999 CMP Publications, Inc.
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National to Build Chip Sets for Via.
(Via Technologies' 133-MHz P6-bus chip set)(Company Business and Marketing)
Microprocessor Report, August 2, 1999 v13 i10 pNA
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On the heels of the announcement of Via Technologies' intent to acquire Cyrix from National (see MPR 7/12/99, p. 5), the two companies have announced that National will manufacture Via's 133-MHz P6-bus chip set. Intel had granted Via a license to manufacture P6-bus chip sets, but that license was limited to slower bus speeds. Intel sued Via after it introduced the 133-MHz chip set. By building the chip set in National's fab, Via gains the protection of National's broad Intel patent license, which does not have any product-specific limitations.
Cyrix officials have said that, as part of Via, Cyrix will have Intel patent protection for its processors. Whether this is done simply by having National build the chips remains to be seen; this action would not be an entirely satisfactory solution, since Cyrix is likely to want to use Asian foundries.
Furthermore, National has put its South Portland, Maine fab up for sale, putting in doubt the length of time it will have a leading-edge fab at which to build the chips.
National hopes to retain a minority interest in the facility, which raises the interesting legal issue of whether a chip built in a foundry that is 40% owned by National is 100% licensed or only 40% licensed. Given this uncertainty, Via's use of National as a foundry may be only the first step in a broader plan for Intel patent protection.
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1999 MicroDesign Resources Inc.
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The enemy of Intel's enemy is its friend.
(Perspective)(Company Business and Marketing)
Electronic Buyers' News, August 2, 1999 p30
Author
Hachman, Mark
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"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." -Benjamin Franklin, July 4, 1776
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About a month ago, that seemed like a patriotic quote. These days, it reads more like an epitaph.
Then, everything made sense. Advanced Micro Devices again dodged Wall Street's ire with cheery Athlon predictions; Via and Acer Laboratories polished their respective chipsets for both the Athlon and the Pentium III, while signing deals with graphics vendors for integrated products. It was a time of cookouts, vacations, detente.
But then Intel sued Via. And rather than drawing all of the companies together, the suit threatens to split the so-called "alternative" coalition right down the middle.
Since the days of the 486, a substantial portion of the market has been dedicated to providing an alternative to the Intel architecture: first a second source, then later a truly distinct architecture. The coalition, made up of companies like Acer Labs, AMD, Cyrix, IBM, National, Rise, and Via has provided a counterpoint, however insignificant, to the weighty prognostications and dictums set down by the multi-billion-dollar chip giant, Intel.
Most other companies have simply learned to live under Intel's benevolent dictatorship-a rule, it must be noted, that has evolved into the unique responsibility of championing the PC platform as a means of preserving it.
But Intel's way of furthering the PC-and itself-has also led to its rolling over OEMs and competitors that got in the way. To Via, Intel must seem like an invading army.
In any good Hollywood war story, the good guys always snatch victory from the jaws of an overwhelming defeat. Some small chink in the opponent's armor always presents itself. Via's use of National's fabs, plus its acquisition of Cyrix, seemed like that frantic scrabbling for something, anything, that could win the day. Why not? With Intel's suit, it had nothing to lose. Via seemed to have snared the victory. But then Trident Microsystems sued Via, too.
I'm not familiar with Taiwan politics. Nor do I understand the rancor that apparently separates the CEOs of both companies. I do know that Trident's suit against its design partner over a simple market segmentation plan seemed like a sucker punch, especially after Intel's suit.
Via may in fact be playing the bully, and Trident's deal with Acer Labs may yet save the day. One point remains, however: Together, AMD, Via, and the others may challenge Intel. Alone, each will be outflanked, marginalized or eliminated by Intel's skillful maneuvers.
Neither Trident, Via, nor any of Intel's rivals can pay the penalty for hubris, even now. Sacrificing a united front for market share is a Pyrrhic victory.
-Mark Hachman (mhachman@cmp.com) is senior editor, computers & multimedia.
Copyright [copyright] 1999 CMP Media Inc.
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1999 CMP Publications, Inc.
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Does Via have the resources for a chip war with Intel?
(Company Business and Marketing)(Column)
PC Week, August 16, 1999 p65
Author
Taschek, John
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As a kid playing Monopoly, I used to buy all the low-rent districts and put huge hotels on them, hoping to wipe out other players who were unlucky enough to land on them. But Baltic and Mediterranean avenues never cut it as revenue generators, and any hope I had for dominating the game usually failed. That's what Via Technologies is doing in the chip world. It seems like the company is buying all the low-rent chip makers, thinking it's going to have a go at big Intel, which owns everything from St. James Place to precious Park Place and Boardwalk- with hotels on each.
Via last week announced its plan to buy IDT's Centaur Technology design subsidiary, which makes the under appreciated WinChip. The processor is an X86-compatible chip that stores a lot of Windows calls in the processor itself. This gives it faster performance than its clock-speed rating, and it costs dimes to make (and a few bucks to buy).
Few bought it, perhaps because IDT couldn't convince users that more megahertz doesn't always mean more power. More likely, IDT couldn't get OEMs to carry the chip because Intel has a strong lock on that market, and the processor giant silently cajoled board makers to avoid using the chip except for test purposes.
A few weeks before the announcement, Via bought National Semiconductor's Cyrix division for $167 million. National wanted to take Cyrix's technology and make PCs on a chip. National also had the MediaGX integrated technology that could have given AMD a run for its money. However, reports of Cyrix instability have been peppering Web sites, which spells doom because not even the anti-Intel folks could back the chip. National kept the MediaGX technology, which means that Via got just a cheap, potentially problematic chip.
Via had its own very good chip-set technology, but it may have made some missteps by pushing too hard for its PC133 architecture, which is a specification for bumping up memory bus speed from the current Intel high of 100MHz to 133MHz. Intel has been downplaying the value of PC133 and insists that its 100MHz memory bus speed is faster than Via's technology.
SDRAM was meant to run at 133MHz, so unless Via totally screwed this up, the Via chip set should make PCs run noticeably faster, a point highlighted by the fact that Intel quietly announced that it also was considering PC133, just not Via's offering.
So what's Via going to do? It's coming out with a PC266 architecture, which will give Intel's Rambus technology a run for the money in many ways, since Rambus is outrageously expensive right now.
Unfortunately, the inexpensive processor technology that Via acquired does not gel well with the higher-performance bus specs. At the same time, Via's own customers have had doubts about how well it can ramp up production. And now the company could be sidetracked by a lawsuit brought by Intel and by the plans for integrating the low-rent chip technologies. I hope Via can pull it off, but Inever could win with just Baltic and Mediterranean.
Does Via or even AMD have a chance? John Taschek can be reached at john_taschek@zd.com.
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1999 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company |
