[ale] [Fwd: DEC and Intel: The Truth is Out There...]

[Geoffrey Myers]

Yet more info about DEC and intel, most of which makes more sense.  All except
the part about the alpha not being a major source of income for DEC, I kinda
disagree with that line.

glen mccready wrote:

> Forwarded-by: Kam T Tam <Kam.T.Tam at cmis.CSIRO.AU>
> From: chu at musp0.jpl.nasa.gov (Eugene Chu)
> To: alpha-osf-managers at ornl.gov
>
> I have quite a number of responses to this, most of which agreed with what
> I felt that if the rumor is true, DEC may be selling out the farm.  However,
> a couple of respondents claimed that this was a false rumor, and a version
> that actually makes sense from Dan Riley <dsr at mail.lns.cornell.edu>:
>
> >The only version of this story that I've heard that makes any sense is
> >the one reported by CNBC and the San Jose Mercury (which is a lot more
> >likely to get tech stories right than the WSJ).  Something like this
> >also showed up on the newswires late yesterday attributed to anonymous
> >sources at digital.  It goes like this:
> >
> > - dec sells most of their fab capacity to intel
> > - dec and intel cross-license their patents, settling the lawsuits
> > - intel licenses the alpha chip designs and agrees to produce alphas
> >   for some number of years (dec has already licensed the designs to
> >   other fabs such as samsung)
> > - intel grants dec some multi-year discounts
> >
> >dec retains ownership of the alpha chip architecture and continues to
> >design new alphas, but gets out of the fab business--this puts them on
> >the same footing as Sun and SGI.  I have some doubts about the wisdom
> >of this--alpha depends on bleeding edge fab to crank the clock speed,
> >much more so than SPARC or MIPS--but it at least makes some sense,
> >where the Wall Street Journal version made no sense at all.
>
> There was one other response making guesses at DEC's business practices,
> which on the surface may seem questionable, but may be rather shrewd.
> Of course, that's just conjecture on the part of the author.
>
> Still, one other respondent claimed that the Alpha is not the major
> source of income for DEC, that its other products and services are.
> Maybe, but without the Alpha, I think it will lose a big chunk of its
> value.
>
> If DEC is indeed cross licensing with Intel, I hope it doesn't end up on
> the short end of the stick, as have happened to many small companies
> that cross license their technology to giants.
>
> eyc



--
Until later:
Geoffrey Myers   geof at abraxis.com