Patriot Scientific Corp, purveyors of the ShBoom Java chip implementation, which it wants to be known now only as PSC1000, has now got silicon from its 0.8 micron process and expects to go to silicon with the 0.5 micron version within 30 days. Patriot claims to be both faster and cheaper than Sun Microsystems Inc’s picoJava implementation – less than half the published price of picoJava, which we hear is either $20 or $100 per chip depending on clock speed. The San Diego, California company says it is on the verge of deals with some household names in both the semiconductor business and end-user product manufacturers in the US, Europe and the Far East. Patriot executives were recently on tour in Japan and Korea talking to six companies and more than one of its potential customers is going to make network computers using the chip, but there are no names just yet. One is said to be on the second or third draft of a definitive agreement with Patriot, says the company.
