Silicon Graphics Inc’s expected cross-licensing agreement with Intel today is another instance of Intel using its muscle to get what it wants, according to Intergraph CEO Jim Meadlock. He suspects Silicon Graphics will have given up some key graphics technology rights to Intel in return for advanced access to Intel’s 64-bit Merced chip technology. Intel and MIPS are expected to reveal the details of their collaboration today (see Top Stories). Meadlock says that Intel tried to use its non disclosure agreements as a lever to gain access to Intergraph’s technology, first implemented in the Clipper RISC chip it acquired from Fairchild Semiconductor in the 1980s. While the focus of the legal battle has currently moved away from technology towards Intel’s alleged anti-competitive behavior, it will ultimately be the technical issues that have to be resolved. Intergraph claims the Clipper chip was the first to include onboard cache memory onto the main chip so that cache ran at the same speed as the processor, and was the first to include technology to keep those two areas of memory coherent. But the rest of Fairchild was acquired by National Semiconductor Inc at around the same time, and Intel claims that its recently renewed cross patenting agreement with NatSemi covers the patents – a contention which Intergraph denies. Fairchild was the company from which Robert Noyce conducted the research that led to the invention of the integrated circuit in the late 1950s. Noyce and Gordon Moore left the company in 1968 to found Intel, and others from Fairchild went on to found such companies as LSI Logic Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Intergraph says that the PowerPC also violates its patents, but for the moment it has its hands full enough with Intel. รก
