If intel says it is "negotiating" with another chip company, you've got to fear the worst, and that a law suit is on the cards.
And that appears to be the case in an apparent clash between Intel and Silicon Integrated Systems (SIS) over its 533MHz front side bus which the chip giant launches any day now. Allegedly.
According to Digitimes, Intel Taiwan says it's not going to take legal action against SIS "at the moment", and that it hopes to resolve any problems over use of the 533MHz front side bus.
Apparently, chipset makers need to license this bus from Intel. So somebody had better tell Via, because it has plans to support the 533MHz FSB too.
We think it may go deeper than that. At Legion Hardware alleges that SIS is shipping a so-called "royalty free" Pentium 4 chipset to ECS and to Shuttle, called the XP4. SIS was unavailable for comment at press time.
As far as we are aware, Via does not have a licence for the 533MHz front side bus, but we do know that it is involved in bitter litigation with Intel over Pentium 4 patents
News source: The Inquirer
