Gives a whole new meaning to Good Corporate Citizenship, doesn’t it? While declaring that wishes nothing but good to Intel Corp, in its agreement with Cyrix Corp (see front), IBM Corp is not simply replacing its existing agreement with the Santa Clara chipmaker, under which it is allowed to fabricate 20% of its requirement for 80486 and 80386 chips, while buying the rest from Intel, it wants to have its cake and eat it by adding all the Cyrix chips it makes to those it is entitled to make under the Intel agreement; the only restriction is that it has to buy four times as many parts from Intel as it makes in its Blue Lightning line; the effect of all this will be to energise Intel to bring the P6 on even sooner if it possibly can – already it is muttering about samples by the end of this year.
