CPU maker Intel is pressuring smaller rival Via Technologies to exit the CPU market, industry sources in Taiwan claim. In exchange, Intel will allow Via to continue making PC chipsets which use Intel’s patented technology, say the sources at PC mainboard manufacturers, who do not wish to be named.
Via are making some very interesting processors which are fast enough for basic desktop tasks, small, low power and mainly very cheap. There are Via laptops out there which pack a 1.2GHz processor and cost less than 500$, which is always nice.
It would be a shame to see them being thrown out of the market due to intel’s pressure. I know I will consider Intel’s mob-like business tactics when I go shopping for a new computer.
I hope all open source supporters throw away their Intel CPU’s in solidarity against the abuse of patents.
I hope all environmentalists throw away their harmful chemicals in solidarity against the abuse of the planet.
Discarding products already purchased will do nothing to the company that produces them. It is wasteful. Changing what you will purchase in the future is the only way to affect a company.
Edited 2006-11-24 23:58
Intel’s processors are not as irreplaceable/essential as various industrial chemicals. You can choose to use PowerPC for embedded, server, and desktop applications.
NotParker, do you spend your whole waking life thinking of ways to insult and/or put down FOSS supporters?
It is sad…very sad.
desNotes
I think it’s hilarious actually…makes for great reading. At least he sticks by his guns.
Nah, it was cute the first few times, now it’s just old
Open your mind to different points of view. It’s not that tough.
NotParker, do you spend your whole waking life thinking of ways to insult and/or put down FOSS supporters?
Considering how easy it is to rile you up and point out the hypocrisy of your ways and also point out that the GPL license isn’t really free and to somewhat parrot the extreme hatred shown towards Microsoft and Novell and others… the answer is no.
It only takes me a few minutes each day.
Whether you spend all day or just a few minutes, it certainly sounds like a destructive thing to do.
You are not the only one here that does it, but you do more than your fair share.
Personally, I have had enough of the bickering here…I am out permanently.
desNotes
NotParker, do you spend your whole waking life thinking of ways to insult and/or put down FOSS supporters?
Considering how easy it is to rile you up and point out the hypocrisy of your ways and also point out that the GPL license isn’t really free and to somewhat parrot the extreme hatred shown towards Microsoft and Novell and others… the answer is no.
It only takes me a few minutes each day.
> It only takes me a few minutes each day.
A few minutes wasted are still a wasted few minutes. Would it not be better to devote them to something contructive? 10 minutes/day is 60+ hours/year. That’s a work week and a half. Given 7.5 workdays, all to yourself, to accomplish something constructive, imagine what you might do.
Positive motivations enrich the spirit, while negative motivations are poison to it.
A few minutes wasted are still a wasted few minutes.
Not if he and others enjoy the dialogue. And, I have to say, I’m glad that NotParker is around here. I want to read differing opinions. I don’t want a boring, homogeneous, one-sided discussion of technical subjects, where everyone essentially agrees vehemently with one another.
A few minutes wasted are still a wasted few minutes. Would it not be better to devote them to something contructive? 10 minutes/day is 60+ hours/year. That’s a work week and a half. Given 7.5 workdays, all to yourself, to accomplish something constructive, imagine what you might do.
Positive motivations enrich the spirit, while negative motivations are poison to it.
I am positively motivated to:
1) Point out the hypocrisy in the positions of the GPL cultists.
2) Annoy they GPL cultists for their non-stop diatribe against Microsoft
I’ll make you a deal. You convince the cultists to stop modding me down when I’m civil and right (with references too) and you convince THEM to stop being so negative about Microsoft and I won’t try to annoy them so much.
Try to remember, this is OSNews, not OSSnews. If the cult wants to preach, I’ll point out the hypocrisy.
This site would be better if people actually expressed the positive things about their OS choices. Instead it seems to just a place for the cult to express hate.
However, I do find it endlessly amusing that the cult is spending a lot more time attacking fellow cultists for impure thoughts these days.
Edited 2006-11-26 19:12
“””I’ll make you a deal. You convince the cultists to stop modding me down when I’m civil and right (with references too) and you convince THEM to stop being so negative about Microsoft and I won’t try to annoy them so much.”””
Oh dear. You’re taking the mod system semi-seriously.
I just browse with a -5 threshold (does anyone not?) and ignore the numbers as much as possible. Some of the most interesting posts are at -5.
Come on, Bruce. There *is* a difference between pointing out unwarranted claims… and going way out of your way to stir things up.
I’ve made OSNews my home because I enjoy the richer mix of views than I get on most Linux-focused sites. Don’t get me wrong, there is some good dicussion, particularly on some of higher quality Linux-focused sites, like lwn.net. But any specialized site tends to involve a certain amount of preaching to the choir. One knows that certain views are not going to be challenged, and that certain views are not likely to be presented. (This is not, specifically, a Linux or OSS phenomenon; any specialized discussion site will, for better or worse, experience it.)
So I certainly find some of your posts interesting and thought provoking.
But if your goal is to be persuasive, I think you could improve your technique. If you start out by offending the reader, you predispose him to take your views less seriously and to react negatively to them. i.e., you’ve already lost half the game.
A well meaning constructive criticism is going to be much more persuasive than a post which is perceived by the reader as an attack or a “troll”. (Note the word “perceived”; that’s the important part.)
Now, if your goal is not to be persuasive, but to simply rile up certain people, I’d say you are doing fine, and I have no advice for you.
Steve Bergman
NotParker, do you spend your whole waking life thinking of ways to insult and/or put down FOSS supporters?
It is sad…very sad.
Actually, it’s neither sad nor anything else. Both FOSS and closed-source supporters are given to hypocrisy and the same kinds of conflicting emotions, and many people in both communities are so ideologically-driven that they can’t stand being poked by people who notice their weaknesses.
Read some Mark Twain. I think you’ll be happier.
“Applying pressure by bargaining” != “ordering”. Intel isn’t filing a lawsuit against VIA, or somesuch.
ok, but i do think it’s kind’a unfair. and it’s not good for the competition (=consumers) either. if this is true, i think some government agency should step up and investigate this…
maybe Via can cooperate with AMD on this?!?
Sure, but that’s the way the game works. Intel has many patents in this area, and any potential competitor needs to understand that this industry is extremely litigious. Via is definitely treading in dangerous legal waters here and, fair or not, Intel has a right to protect its turf with all potential tools of the legal system.
sure, sure, they should protect their intellectual property. nothing wrong there. but they try to use their patents on chipsets to prevent VIA from competition in another area – desktop/laptop processors. i think that’s unfair…
Intel took VIA/Centaur to court back in 2002 and settled base on the processor patents. VIA has valid x86 designs that don’t infringe on Intel.
It’s definitely unfair to consumers… Unfortunately, as far as I know, it’s completely legal. I just hope VIA has the guts to turn them down.
(If the last processor wars between Intel and AMD proved anything, it’s that Intel needs competition. Give them no one to outdo, and they make mediocre CPUs.)
Yes, in the same way that Microsoft ‘applied pressure’ to PC manufacturers to ‘discourage’ them from bundling alternative software packages, amongst other things.
As I remember, MS didn’t employ lawsuits either.
It would be a real shame to lose VIA as I think they’re perfect for home servers. I’ve got 5 Edens running FreeBSD/Ubuntu now, of which one is used as media center and I’m very fond of these machines.
Next purchase will be the dual core version.
Thats just mean. Besides, my old VIA C3 733 system runs great, everything supports it fine and it uses very little power. I mean, ALL the cpu has is a tiny heatsink. Even my 600mhz p3 machine has a huge heatsink and cooler.
VIA had better not give in
p.s.
no I havent read the article yet…
Thats just mean.
Actually, it’s business
Maybe Intel is scared that nVidia will merge with Via?
Now that would be an interesting merger
This is Nonsense. I am a proud owner of a VIA Nano-ITX motherboard/Via processor. I paid a great deal of money for this and I don’t want to see VIA’s innovation go away due to this Intel moffia. VIA should reinvest their monies with Intel and continue their license agreement and continue making chips. I have a slimserver (http://www.slimdevices.com) running linux now for over 500 days using only VIA chips. And get this, it only consumes 70watts!
If VIA goes away there’s no telling how many Chinese (mainland) rip-offs will come about and just laugh at Intel. Intel should open up the x86 architecture just as Sun Microsystems has opened up their own architecture. Only great things can come out of this. I hate to see the x86 legacy go down the tubes due to legal agreements over intellectual property which should be in the public domain!
This is science!
(btw: I am drunk on Franziskaner sitting in a bar with fellow linux hackers, if that means anything!)
Edited 2006-11-25 04:12
I hate to see the x86 legacy go down the tubes due to legal agreements over intellectual property which should be in the public domain!
Well, I’m going to be rather happy if some new cpu replaces x86. It is a very old architecture and should have retired long ago. It survives because people just like old stuff, and they use windows, which is x86 only.
A new architecture will surely enforce better coding guidelines throughout the computer industry. I’m sick of devices that work only on 1 or 2 systems.
It survives because people just like old stuff, and they use windows, which is x86 only.
Windows runs on x86, x64 (AMD and Intel) and IA64.
Interestingly enough, 341 of the current Top 500 Supercomputers use x86 or x64. Another 35 use IA64.
In June of 2000, x86 had 3 on the Top 500.
In Nov 2003 x86 and x64 had 195 in the Top 500.
Now its 341.
Cheap commodity x86 and x64 processors are taking over the Top 500.
Cheap commodity x86 and x64 processors are taking over the Top 500.
But who’s in the top ten? While half are x86, Intel is not dominating. 2 are opterons, 2 are Xeons, 1 itanium and then IBM rounds out the top 5 with Power boxes.
I’m afraid x86 is here to stay. Intel did try to come up with a replacement for it, and look at what good it did to them…
I’m afraid x86 is here to stay. Intel did try to come up with a replacement for it, and look at what good it did to them…
Like any other technology it will die and will be replaced one day
But who’s in the top ten? While half are x86, Intel is not dominating. 2 are opterons, 2 are Xeons, 1 itanium and then IBM rounds out the top 5 with Power boxes.
Itanium is a RISC architecture designed by HP/Intel. It isn’t x86.
I don’t think anyone has made as big a jump in as short a time in terms of CPU power as Intel has done with the Core architecture which is now quad core. Think about it. If Cambridge (for example) wanted to upgrade their cluster, they coudl replace their dual core 5160’s with quad core CPU’s. (Maybe not today as the speed is a little slower).
Power’s advantage partially revolves around a lot of cores. x64 can do that now.
>But who’s in the top ten? While half are x86, Intel >is not dominating. 2 are opterons, 2 are Xeons, 1 >itanium and then IBM rounds out the top 5 with Power >boxes.
Please update your knowledgebase.
Refer to
http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/194300593
Aleast 3 Opteron based.
Cheap commodity x86 and x64 processors are taking over the Top 500.
I did not say that they aren’t powerful. I know that x86 is now very much streamlined and poised to work for at least another 5 years, but we are reaching some limits that are very difficult to overcome.
Parallelisation is only going to take us so far… Some algorithms are almost impossible to run parallel. Today, the legacy x86 baggage is already heavy. Who knows what tommorrow will be? I’d rather let go of some baggage and move on.
Thomas Edison used to make houses out of nothing but concrete. I for one will abandon any of such housing than try to make it leak less.
the only reason the IT industry is still tied to x86 is called ‘Windows’. Windows is very picky about what it runs on (=x86 or x86+64bit extensions) so nobody buys a computer which can’t do x86. if linux was the most important OS, x86 whould have died long ago…
the only reason the IT industry is still tied to x86 is called ‘Windows’. Windows is very picky about what it runs on (=x86 or x86+64bit extensions) so nobody buys a computer which can’t do x86.
That must explain why at one time windows was available for multiple architectures that were not x86
if linux was the most important OS, x86 whould have died long ago…
Linux was originally written on x86, Intel was already the dominate force when linux was started.
There is no proof that anything in the hardware realm would be different today if Linux were the dominate player.
Nice dreams though
well, i don’t think it’s all MS fault or something, but it sure has been some interaction between MS’ and x86′ positions. chicken-and-egg like, i suppose.
i think a GPL-only softwareworld would have been different. then there is no reason to run software on a specific platform, unless it’s the best (cost/performance wise). and x86 does have a handicap compared to other cpu platforms.
now atm it has a performance advantage, but not so much 10 years ago, and if all software would have been able to run on everything – why go for x86? the most efficient architecture would have won, and not x86…
In the past, MS has had versions of Windows running on the Alpha, MIPS and the PowerPC; they weren’t very successful.
The Alpha chip was meant to be replaced by the Itanium, so no further development of Windows NT for it was necessary. Sgi MIPS based workstations were not exactly the cheapest thing one could buy and they were shipped with IRIX. PPC for the desktop used to mean Apple and Windows NT 3.51/4 did not compare to MacOS. Until Windows NT 4 was released there had been little software written for this OS and even less for it to run on non x86 chips.
The success of the x86 architecture on the desktop over m68k/PPC is owed to DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. I think that if bad money drives out good then a variant of the same law applies to bad software and Intel has simply largely benefitted from that.
Via makes nifty chips and Intel simply aims at killing the smaller competitors with good ideas and some market now that AMD has grown too big and won’t be beaten easily.
The Alpha chip was meant to be replaced by the Itanium, so no further development of Windows NT for it was necessary.
Actually Windows 2000 made it into beta on the Alpha. I believe that then Compaq bought Digital and decided not to spend any more money on the project.
Itanium did not factor into that because Itanium was an HP/Intel project.
Eventually Compaq sold the Alpha technology to Intel.
The success of the x86 architecture on the desktop over m68k/PPC is owed to DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. I think that if bad money drives out good then a variant of the same law applies to bad software and Intel has simply largely benefitted from that.
I believe Intel was well ahead of PPC performance-wise when the PIII hit 1ghz. Then Intel made a dumb decision (that made them loads of money) by going with the P4 Netburst architecture. The only thing PPC had going for it was Altivec.
Then Intel resurrected the PIII (as Pentium M) line with huge success in laptops.
Then the Core archticture came along and blew away the PPC.
(Very simplistic history).
I’m sure many Intel engineers shake their heads at those wasted P4 years.
“Windows NT 3.1 was released for Intel x86 PC compatible, DEC Alpha, and ARC-compliant MIPS platforms. Windows NT 3.51 added support for the PowerPC processor in 1995, specifically PReP-compliant systems such as the IBM Power Series desktops/laptops and Motorola PowerStack series.
Intergraph Corporation ported Windows NT to its Clipper architecture and later Windows NT 3.51 was ported to SPARC, but neither version was sold to the public as a retail product.
Windows NT 4.0 was the last major release to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC, though development of Windows 2000 for Alpha continued until 1999, when Compaq stopped support for Windows NT on that architecture.
Released versions of NT for Alpha were 32-bit only, although Alpha hardware was used internally at Microsoft during early development of 64-bit Windows 2000 for IA-64. Only two of the Windows NT 4.0 variants (IA-32 and Alpha) have a full set of service packs available. All of the other ports done by third parties (Motorola, Intergraph, etc.) have few, if any, publicly available updates.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT
Edited 2006-11-26 20:38
“Windows runs on x86, x64 (AMD and Intel) and IA64.
Interestingly enough, 341 of the current Top 500 Supercomputers use x86 or x64. Another 35 use IA64.”
Look at the OS breakdown stats though:
Linux 75.20 %
Unix 17.20 %
BSD Based 0.60 %
Mixed 6.40 %
Mac OS 0.60 %
And compared to the Processor family:
Power 18.20 %
Cray 0.80 %
Alpha 0.60 %
PA-RISC 4.00 %
Intel IA-32 24.00 %
NEC 0.60 %
Sparc 0.60 %
Intel IA-64 7.00 %
Intel EM64T 21.60 %
AMD x86_64 22.60 %
It’s clear that the Linux clusters are running on more than just x86, x64 and IA64. So the numbers are more about commodity architectures that will run Linux.
Isn’t that what x64 does in part? I am not a CPU engineer, but I have understood it to be a more radical extension of the x86 arch…in that it cannot be equated to the previous evolutions of x86 which took it up to 32-bit. I could be completely wrong on that, though. If anyone can sum the x86 evolution up into a paragraph or two, please do so.
You are entirely correct, however, that x86 has not been replaced because of backwards-compatibility. It is only recently that hardware and software emulation has become a viable option. Until Vista, Windows could even run software written for the first Windows release. Although x86/x64 isn’t going away soon, it is a good thing that MS put their foot down and did away with 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows. Although it was entirely possible to keep 16-bit compatibility (x64 chips can still run 16-bit x86), I see little need for it beyond a certain point. For change to come about, the old must eventually be retired.
How many of us out there are still running 16-bit Windows apps? If you are, I think it is finally time to give it up. The only 16-bit software I still run are some of the classic Maxis games, and I have a seperate box for that.
>I have a slimserver (http://www.slimdevices.com) >running linux now for over 500 days using only VIA >chips. And get this, it only consumes 70watts!
My very old Mitac 8355 AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Mobile @1.8Ghz/Radeon 9600Pro-Mobile/1GB SODIMM RAM/120GB HD laptop discharges ~50watts from it’s li-ion battery while playing DX9c game (e.g. Titan Quest) at max performance mode.
There are two major CPU providers, AMD and Intel. If they want to embed TCPA into their CPU, nobody can stop them. Via maybe the only choice of CPU to break the monopoly. I suppose that’s why they want to destroy them.
Yeah… good idea. Its a shame I’m out of votes to mod that up.
Free insider business advice from Intel to VIA, I’d say.
It’s all legal business of course, but it is amazing to see the lengths Intel goes, to obtain more control of a market they already dominate.
AFAIK They don’t really dominate that subsegment – I’m not sure if they even got any real interest in it.
The only real competition VIA got is the AMD Geode and naturally the widelyspread idea that you’ll need at least 4 cores to start up firefox.
It isn’t throwing away a processor that will dent their business. Like rabage said, it will harm our environment instead by creating true waste (throwing away a perfectly functional thing? how ridiculous).
But I also value sane business, so I won’t be so sure if my next computer (that I’ll buy after at least the next 2 years…) will have an Intel pocessor.
The big problem is the majority of computer users who are ignorant or simply don’t care about mamoth business tactics.
Oh, and remember not drink any Coca-Cola (they steal water from the population in India and Guatemala, and have other obscure strategies), don’t buy Nike (if you care about ending the sweatshops), etc, etc.
I personally try to avoid this kind of companies, but then again, it’s hard to find immaculate ethics in the business world, right?
Intel wants via out of the game, can you blame them?
Intel saw what happened with AMD when they came out with the athlon64 and opteron line of cpu’s and realized what a small company can do with the right engineers and innovation.
It would only take one decent innovation from via and intel could be SOL again.
Don’t get me wrong, i don’t think via is by any means poised to take over the market, but if they come out with a cpu that is close to the core 2 duo in performance and costs 50% less intel has a problem on their hands.
Intel saw what happened with AMD when they came out with the athlon64 and opteron line of cpu’s and realized what a small company can do with the right engineers and innovation.
I wouldn’t really call 5 billion dollar AMD a “small company”.
Thats his point, AMD didn’t enter the market as a 5 billion company they built it from small company with good products to compete with intel.
I too am sad that VIA might be pushed out of the market, competition is good for everyone both businesses and consumers, it makes businesses work harder and innovate more with new features and it give’s these new features to consumers cheaper. The best example in the PC world i can think of is nVidia vs ATI. Look at the technology they put into the hands of consumers in a very short amount of time. These new graphics cards are becoming more capable then processors.
fight it VIA.
But there is no competition “thanks” to patents. They affect both businesses and consumers negatively. I’m afraid VIA can’t fight the patent war, for not being a US based company.
Edited 2006-11-27 15:44
AMD has the Geode…
http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0…
Intel has the Core Solo….
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/coresolo/index.htm
Both of these are very competitive….the Core Solo U-series consume less power than any of the C7 lines (they run at a lower clockspeed, but also have nifty things like a full 686 instruction set, SSE/2/3, etc.).
The Geode is the k7 core. They, too, consume less power than all but the bottom-of-the-line C7.
Via’s quality has gone down the tubes, too. All three of the C7 boards I’ve dealt with had serious defects.
They’d be smart to refocus on chipsets. Their PIII/Athlon offerings weren’t bad. I can’t say the same for their AMD64 stuff. Don’t know about the P4 sets, as I tend to like regular Intel chipsets with Intel processors.
VIA’s products are fine for those who use there machines for small tasks (Office, Email, chatting, etc). I also support VIA specially because they provide very cheap products and the people in third world can easily afford it.
Who the hell is INTEL, forcing them to get out of business? This is not fair.
You might see things differently if you had invested serious dollars in developing a technology, patented it, and then watched a competitor waltz in and “borrow” much of your technology. Businesses aren’t charities. They owe their continued existence to investing for the future and leveraging their past accomplishments. When someone steals your past accomplishments, you don’t have much to leverage.
Who stole what past accomplishments? Intel never had to give anyone the ability to design and manufacture IA32 chips and chipsets. They chose to let Cyrix do it (was it Nat Semi?). Intel has also had a choice to make cheaper chips, and integrate hardware features that accelerate expensive tasks, for a long time. VIA has actually decided to do it. No one really likes their chips in performance terms, but there’s no middle ground. Even a Celeron-M system generally raises you to 2-3x the cost of a VIA 1-1.5Ghz (or are they still stuck at 1.3?).
To me, it still looks very much like, “let’s get this company out of this space so we won’t have to genuinely compete in it.”
I would certainly consider buying a system with similar performance to Athlon XP or late-gen PIII chips, consuming very little power. Pentium-M boxes have shown to be able to reach only about double the power consumption of the VIA boards (check SPCR), and that’s without the rest of the machines really being made for low poer consumption (as the VIAs are). How much per units would a 1-1.4GHz PIII+i810 (but w/ DDR or DDR-II RAM support) chip be made with new 90nm or 65nm processes? How much would a dually like that be? If under $300 for the board, chip(s), and passive cooling, fitted to the Mini-ITX or Flex-ATX standard, that would compete well against VIA (VIA’s ones currently go to near $300 at Newegg, but with the $150-200 ones being the good values).
Edited 2006-11-27 17:17
Intel better be careful here. The US DOJ might just start Sherman Act (Anti-Trust) proceedings against them.