The US Department of Energy has won a royalty-free concession from Intel Corp for the Pentium chip, which it plans to harden for space and defense purposes. Intel will offer the government’s Sandia National Labs a free license to modify the Pentium so that it can withstand the high levels of radiation found for applications such as satellites, space vehicles and defense systems. The agreement will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in microprocessor design costs according to Intel, which says it agreed to the deal because of its patriotic allegiance to the United States. The first modified chips aren’t expected to be ready for volume production until at least four years time, after $65m of R&D work. Sandia has already hardened five generations of chips, and won similar rights from Intel in the 1980s for the 8085 and 8051 microcontrollers. Sandia is also the owner of the custom built ASCI Red supercomputer based on Intel chips, which still heads the Top 500 supercomputer list.
