Doesn’t anyone else think Intel Corp’s out-of-court settlement with DEC implies it is guilty of stealing secrets, as DEC’s lawsuit contended? Isn’t Intel effectively admitting it’s ‘a fair cop’ by agreeing a package of plant acquisition, technology and patent licensing, exchange and discounts with DEC which some say is worth as much as $1.5bn? Surely Intel wouldn’t have offered DEC such a deal unless it was facing the lawsuit. That’s not to say Intel has come out of this badly, but on paper it looks even better for DEC – a right result at last. DEC’s Hudson, Massachusetts-based Fab 6 chip plant being sold to Intel for $700m currently employs 2,500 people. It’s thought up to 500 might remain with DEC. Annual capital spending saved according to Merrill Lynch’s estimate is $150m. DEC has invested several hundred million in the plant. DEC’s Alpha customers get an assured roadmap for multiple future generations of the processor, even if DEC does eventually migrate to Intel, as many observers expect. The Alpha roadmap already extends beyond EV6 and the future EV7 21364, which is being touted as Arana and is due in 1999. DEC is moving to an 0.25 micron process from 0.35 with the 21264 EV6. Intel will take that down to 0.18 microns. Presumably EV7 could be a vehicle for any Intel IA-64 design techniques that are made available to DEC under the 10-year patent cross-license part of the settlement. Under the deal Intel also gets DEC’s well-regarded StrongARM embedded design: a bone thrown Intel’s way, according to Merrill Lynch’s Steve Milunovich. DEC gets a mainstream architecture in Merced – to which it will port DEC Unix – that will live alongside Alpha, until it eventually migrates over to Intel long-term. The companies wouldn’t say whether Intel will use any of DEC’s binary translation technologies in future product offerings but DEC has said it’ll make NT compatible on Merced and Alpha, and DEC Unix compatible across the two chipsets which are both little-endian. Sun Microsystems Inc’s Solaris comes in big- and little-endian flavors for Sparc and Intel respectively. Applications are not compatible between the two.
