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VIA to Create Pentium 4 'Clone' 112

Posted by michael from the lawsuits-galore dept.
PyroMosh writes: "ZDNet is carrying a brief article about VIA's plans to start producing clones of the Pentium 4. VIA's already in legal trouble with Intel and it seems unlikley that this will go unchallenged by the chipmaking juggernaut. The Register is also covering this, and SiliconStrategies.com has an article with a bit more detail."
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VIA to Create Pentium 4 'Clone' More

VIA to Create Pentium 4 'Clone'

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  • Lawsuits (Score:1, Insightful)

    by cadfael ( 103180 )
    Seems that in this case, a lawsuit makes sense. If I made something, had a competitor copy it (and not have my okay), you bet I'd sue.
    • If P4 has been legitimately reverse-engineered, then VIA is beyond reproach. Typically, the companies who live by reverse-engineering go to great length to document the process. Of course, they'd have to pay hefty legal fees if that process is challenged in court, but for the giant like VIA this isn't much of a problem.

    • Re:Lawsuits (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      It depends on how they are defining clone. If it just runs the same code, thats one thing, if they reproduce proprietary chip disign techniques, thats another.
      some would consider AMD a clone as well.
      • Many people these days don't seem to remember that far back (maybe I'm getting old), but for a long time, AMD (and in those days Cyrix was the other big one) *were* virtually exact clones (of 386/486 etc).

        Its only *relatively* recently (three or four years ago?) that AMD decided to "fork" the design and start adding features of their own.

    • When IBM first brought out their PCs they were
      "cloned". IBM brought on the lawsuits which
      ultimately failed. The important word here is
      "cloned" which has a different meaning then
      "copied". Cloning attempts reproduce the
      functionality of the cloned item by coming up
      with their own design. "Copying" makes an exact
      duplicate of the original, which of course would
      be illegal. (eg. like selling copied software CDs)

  • Wait a second (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bool ( 144199 )
    Didn't AMD do something similiar in reverse engineering Intel's chips? Anyone know what legal action came of that?

    • Re:Wait a second (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      AMD licenses the x86 instruction set from Intel. [zdnet.com]
      • VIA has been making x86 chips for a while... I would expect them to have a license of this sort as well... so what is the trouble then?
        • The problem isn't trying to support the x86 instruction set or MMX, SSE, or SSE2. It's that VIA wants to use the same bus protocol as the Pentium 4, so that their chip is a drop-in replacement. Since the Pentium 2, everyone has been barred from doing that. Intel's bus protocol for their Pentium 2 through 4 line is patented. Chipset vendors like VIA were able to get licenses to implement support for the Pentium 2 and Pentium 3's bus (GTL), but not for making processors for it. That's why AMD couldn't make processors that work on Intel chipsets and motherboards after the Pentium. Intel is also sueing VIA for making a chipset supporting the Pentium 4.
      • Interesting article. I've been a fan of AMD
        chips for years, because they tend to be
        cheaper than Intel's offerings, as well
        as outperform them. However, I'm curious
        as to what exactly AMD is paying for the right
        to use. Surely not 'mov', 'jmp', 'cmp', etc.
        I wonder where our new crop of emulators would
        fall if one can charge for use of their chipset
        instructions...
    • A post-test loop? You mean you don't check if you're alive before you go to work? Look Out, It's Zombie Bool!!

      ...only kidding

  • hehehe (Score:2, Funny)

    by TheMMaster ( 527904 )
    "already in legal trouble with intel"
    This is like calling a kickboxer a bad name and when he says "WHAT did you say" repeat it...
  • We all know that the Cyrix... well, sucks. It sounds like a bad move for VIA anyway. Why not mimic one of the AMD chips? If they are going to get into legal trouble, why not mimic something higher end.

  • VIA denies this. (Score:5, Informative)

    by marcop ( 205587 ) <(gro.todhsals) (ta) (pocram)> on Friday October 19, 2001 @02:36PM (#2452454) Homepage
    3Dnow.net links to the article at: http://www.theinquirer.net/19100103.htm [theinquirer.net] that states that VIA denies this. Gotta love the opening paragraph.
    • From your linked article:

      SOURCES CLOSE TO VIA said that an employee who seemed to hint that the firm had a Pentium 4 clone it might launch in 2004

      2004? By then Intel might be up to the Pentium 5 or 6! Why bother?
      • > By then Intel might be up to the Pentium 5 or 6! Why bother?

        Even if they called it Pentium 5 or 6, my guess is that it will still be the same core as the P4, just with a better process, and perhaps added instructions... sort of like the Pentium Pros, Pentium IIs Klamaths, and Pentium IIIs Katmai, Coppermine.. I know I am missing a bunch of them variations of the P6 die.
    • Can someone please mod the parent to "Funny" instead of "Informative" as some of the replies to this obviously don't understand that The Inquirer [theinquirer.net] is a humour/parody site.

  • 2Ghz chips... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by LightningTH ( 151451 )
    "Why does the world need a 2-GHz system?" quizzed Glenn Henry, president of Via's Centaur Technology Inc. subsidiary in Austin, Tex.

    Quoted from the story, apparently VIA doesn't realize that games are the only real application pushing chips into new speeds. People wants games faster and people want games that are more realistic, by upping the CPU and GPU speeds, we can get to some very stunning graphics.

    Might have to be careful, may result in actually creating the Matrix...Or would we be creating a Matrix inside a Matrix?

    • games are the only real application pushing chips into new speeds

      This statement is inaccurate. It needs an extra word: "games are the only real application pushing mainstream chips into new speeds".

      There are plenty of high-end applications (e.g. scientific visualisation, special effects, simulation, high-end servers etc, weather prediction/modelling etc) that have been pushing chips (and computers in general) to high speeds over the last 20 odd years, but not in a way that has been affordable to the consumer. The manufacturers of those systems make lots of money by selling those systems at extremely high prices. Games push companies to try make that level of functionality affordable to the man on the street, but games have never resulted in the actual creation of any of those technologies (the closest thing to innovation I can think of is programmable shaders on the GPU, but even that concept is very old, the only new thing is that its fast and its on the GPU; even the GPU concept was nothing new, it was only new to *mainstream* folk).

      Side note, what is it with this slashdot "invalid form key" crap?

  • This is an illogical use of resources (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vortigern00 ( 443602 ) on Friday October 19, 2001 @02:38PM (#2452470) Journal
    To reverse engineer and duplicate a processor requires a superior understanding of processor design and construction.

    Once you have reverse engineered the processor, why wouldn't you then put your resources into designing a better processor based on what you've learned, rather than wasting time making a clone?

    • Because no one is going to buy some small-time shop's processor unless they say that it's just like the Pentium IV but without the fancy hologram.

    • Re:This is an illogical use of resources (Score:5, Informative)

      by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Friday October 19, 2001 @02:55PM (#2452555)
      To reverse engineer and duplicate a processor requires a superior understanding of processor design and construction.

      Once you have reverse engineered the processor, why wouldn't you then put your resources into designing a better processor based on what you've learned, rather than wasting time making a clone?

      Actually, it turns out that reverse-engineering is better for a couple of reasons.

      • It's less work, not more.

        When designing a chip, you have to make a host of design decisions without knowing for certain how each of them will affect performance (you try to make an intelligent gamble on picking the right approaches). If you have an existing architecture to copy, you know more or less what the tradeoff results actually were. This saves a lot of agonizing and design time.

      • You need to follow the leader's instruction set.

        AMD is big enough *now* to add its own instruction set extensions, but this is a fairly recent development. Anyone else has to make their chip fully compatible with either Intel or AMD (Intel for safety). This counts as "cloning" as far as the average tech article writer is concerned. Whether the microarchitectural approaches are copied as well is up to the clone maker.



      I know that Via's not planning to make a P4 clone (yet). However, I believe that reverse-engineering would by far be the less costly approach for anyone attempting to clone the P4.

      • Theres a third reason to prefer reverse engineering from creating something new: riding off the success of your predecessor. When you make something that is compatible with something that 50 million people are already using, you have an existing potential market of 50 million people who can automatically use your product. If you make something new, there is nobody using it, no existing software base that already works with it etc, so the barrier to market entry is much higher.

    • Re:This is an illogical use of resources (Score:4, Funny)

      by dschuetz ( 10924 ) <davidNO@SPAMdasnet.org> on Friday October 19, 2001 @02:55PM (#2452557)
      To reverse engineer and duplicate a processor requires a superior understanding of processor design and construction.

      To say nothing about the fact that it requires the resources to actually develop reliable, working chips in the first place.

      I've had no end to trouble in my Abit board with Via chipset. USB, Zip, Sound, and other problems regularly blamed on the Via chips.

      I wouldn't touch a Via CPU with a 10-foot pole (or a 6-foot Czech, for that matter).
    • "Once you have reverse engineered the processor, why wouldn't you then put your resources into designing a better processor based on what you've learned, rather than wasting time making a clone?"

      Because Via is a company and there is already an established market for the pentium 4. Simply making a superior chip is not a guarantee of success. There is a lot of marketing and thus resources involved in releasing a brand new chip.

      Via may in fact be working on a new chip, but one must make money in the mean time.
      • > Via may in fact be working on a new chip, but one must make money in the mean time.

        This 'P4 Clone' would in fact be that new chip. But they are calling it a 'P4 Clone' to take advantage of what Intel has already done to market the P4.

        Just because they call it a 'clone' doesn't mean that it has to be reverse engineered or have very similar microarchitectural features internally.... Afterall, whatever we call these CPUs, they are simply names, and you can call any design any name you want...
  • just running around looking for a biscuit that's not there
  • Why didn't they clone the athlon? It's faster and AMD is much less likely to sue the crud out of them than Intel.

    So when do the $100 Geforce3 Ti500 clones come out now?

  • Good. (Score:4, Funny)

    by perdida ( 251676 ) <thethreatproject ... Yom minus author> on Friday October 19, 2001 @02:42PM (#2452493) Homepage Journal
    How will VIA have a competitive advantage?

    They will use substandard manufactoring processes, open chip plants in third world dictatorships, and provide less customer outreach and support.

    Good!

    Poor countries will get chipmaking infrastructure, and chip manufacturers will produce more cheaply. This part of the information economy is the part that can reach the poorest countries first; a factory job making chips is the first step towards participation in a western style net economy.

    VIA won't advertise with idiotic pitches like the Blue Men. Perhaps it will take another tack -- selling to budget computer makers.

    The chip cost is a big part of computer cost, so a cheaper chip will enable more companies to produce cheap computers, improving competition in this market sector.

    This is like spurring a housing market with a revolution in pre-fabricated housing. It makes possibilities available to an entirely new group of potential buyers.

    • Is already known to be highly saturated. Will VIA's chips be signifigantly cheaper than the Celrons or Durons (or at least have a better cost-to-performance ratio?) If so, will that margin be enough to keep the company afloat?

      This sounds like something that would have been a great idea a year or two ago, but in this competitive (and now saturated) market, it will be tough going for the guys at VIA.

  • Open Source processors!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Friday October 19, 2001 @02:43PM (#2452500) Homepage
    I just had a great revelation (which occured when I banged my head on the router rack 5 minutes ago): we can take them all on with Open Source processors! You bring paperclips for wiring, I'll mix sand and lime for Silicon. We'll conquer the world as we did with software!

    Coming soon, Open Source hard drives. Does anyone have any spare beer coasters?

  • Oooops! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Glock27 ( 446276 )
    Via should have cloned Athlon instead! ;-)

    Regardless, the Hammer will be the processor of choice once it debuts.

    299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

    • Much the way MS DRM v2 has been cracked, scientists have broken God's law [space.com] of the speed of light. Let's just hope he doesn't get his unholy lawyers on their ass.

  • WOW A 2GHZ CYRIX (Score:5, Funny)

    by KingKire64 ( 321470 ) on Friday October 19, 2001 @02:46PM (#2452517) Homepage Journal
    2GHZ lets see based on the cyrix methodaligies that would be something like 20 x 100mhz bus in real world standards that would be 13 x 33mhz bus. I wonder if this chip will retain the heat features. Imagine a chip running at 500 C. And they will be cheap just like thier ancestors. 25$ a chip so when it burns its self up in 3 months you go buy another. GOD I WANT ONE!
    • The latest VIA C3 (nee Cyrix III) processors dissipate only 8W of power, compared to many times that for both AMD and Intel processors (35-70 watts depending on the model.) Given halfway decent case airflow, C3s only require a passive heatsink (no fan.)

      Ian
  • Since intel is already hating on them for making a P4 chipset, and no mobo makers wanted to use it, VIA decided to make thier own motherboards, now this is just the next step why stop at making motherboards they are going to make the processors to go in them too.
  • It seems as if Via recognizes they will most likely be sued and be forced to forfeit some of their earnings if they clone Intel products. In the face of this, they also seem to feel that they can benefit enough to offset the losses caused by a lawsuit.

    A similar incident occurred with John Deere and Caterpillar about 5 years ago. Caterpillar had figured out that using a rubber-tracked farm tractor gives farmers better yields. John Deere literally stole the concept and accepted the lawsuit because what they learned was so valuable it was worth it!

    • whixh is funny, because the thing that gave John Deere his start was stolen from another industry!

      FYI, John Deere became famouse because he took the saws that were being used by lumber companies and sold them as plows. They worked better because of there coating, which removed the problem of dirt clumping onto the blade.
      how's that for more then you wanted to know?

  • Rumor! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spazntwich ( 208070 ) on Friday October 19, 2001 @03:06PM (#2452602)
    This has already been debunked as a rumor!

    Way to go slashdot....

    http://www.theinquirer.net/19100103.htm - There's your linkified proof. :)
  • Assuming that VIA is in fact trying to make a P4 clone, is it possibable that they are trying to force a takeover. If VIA is having internal problems might they be trying to get Intel to sue for stock?

    Otherwise this information is either a leak of gargantuan proportions or a hoax. I would personaly put my cash in the hoax theory.
  • If anyone can (legally) make a x86 compatible processor nowadays, whats wrong with making one that will simply fit into a P4 socket? VIA can simply claim its a P4-clone and package a die of their own design. And I think that is what they're doing since it was mentioned in the article on The Register that there are 18 pipe stages in VIA's design.. and if I recall correctly, the P4 has greater than 20 pipeline stages.

    I don't ever recall AMD getting sued for making those Super 7 K6-2s and K6-3s CPUs.
  • Considering how much trouble I've had
    with VIA motherboard chipsets and random
    crashes I wouldn't touch a VIA cpu with
    a ten foot pole.

  • Are they going to clone the heat too?

  • Who wants a CPU that looks like a sheep
  • It seems from the article that all they are doing is making a chip that will be compatible with systems that are also compatible with the P4. All they mean by "P4 Clone" is that you can use it interchangeably with a P4. The only other similarity mentioned in the articles is the 18 stage pipeline, but there are so many ways of implementing such a pipeline that I doubt VIA's will be exactly the same. All in all, I say this is good competition, although it probably won't amount to much.

  • Not gonna sell. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by billcopc ( 196330 )
    VIA can produce all the cpu it likes, I won't be buying any of them. If they still can't produce a stable motherboard chipset after years of research and practice, then how could they manage a completely functional x86 processor core ? I don't think they can do it well enough to chew into Intel.
    • VIA's chipsets and its CPUs are completely different creatures. Their CPUs are based on the research and work of different companies they acquired -- Cyrix, IDT, and Centaur.

      Whether or not any of THOSE companies can produce a completely functional x86 is up for debate, but you should realize that the work that has gone into the development of VIA CPUs belongs to other companies, and not VIA itself.

  • Competition for AMD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by IPFreely ( 47576 ) <mark@mwiley.org> on Friday October 19, 2001 @03:29PM (#2452708) Homepage Journal
    This seems like in the end they would be competition for AMD rather than Intel.

    The market for these would be people who are not already emotionally/contractually tied to Intel. This space is primarily held by AMD. Via is less likely to get any customers out of Intel. They are more likely to take customers from AMD.

    Sure Intel will gripe, but if they're smart they'll let VIA in just enough to pound AMD.

  • great... (Score:1, Troll)

    by superflex ( 318432 )
    yet another company building on the terrible, terrible x86 architecture.

    legacy code can lick my cajones, that piece of garbage should have been dropped a long time ago.

  • If VIA had cloned AMD it would still be pitiful. You can now have a mobo that causes problems with a constantly overheating proc that causes even more!

    Besides that, I think that the core legal issue that VIA would face over this would be the Intel extentions such as SSE2, MMX, etc, and not over the core x86 instruction set (which they apparently have a license for)
  • Alternatives for the platform could be very good. Think of the Socket 7 architecture in retrospect. They ended up going much faster than the marketing people at Intel would have liked! People still use K6-2s and K6-IIIs, but who would use a p200 in this age?

    this is another blow against no competition (note the double negative). intel no longer has the only chip for the p4 platform. This is good for consumers and it is good for the industry. Way to go Via!
  • where the buff...err..shee...errrr...pent...

    damn, I give up.

    Copyright means we get to *copy it, right*?

    I had to say it, sorry.

    But this begs the questions: Why? People lambasted the design of the P4 for bringing us what is in essence a 2Ghz+ 486, right?

    Why on god's green earth would someone want to immitate rather than innovaaaa...

    Ooops, never mind.

    Moose
  • wouldn't it be illegal for Intel to reverse engineer the Jericho 4 and find out if it used reverse engineered components from the pentium 4?
  • By the time they come up with the P4 perfected, they'll be obsolete... probably big time obsolete.
    Would be good for maybe a Nintendo Gameboy or something, though. Hehe..
  • "SOURCES CLOSE TO VIA said that an employee who seemed to hint that the firm had a Pentium 4 clone it might launch in 2004 hasn't been taken out and shot but is being advised to shop around for a bullet with his name on it."

    Hmm...2004...i don't think anyone wants a p4 type chip in 2004...Does anyone? This thing accoording to the current rate of changing avery 1-1.5 years by 2004 this thing will be like...a waste of time. Why doesn't via just concentrate on making good mobo chip thingys?

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