Against the background of impending litigation from Intel Corp, VIA Technologies Inc has introduced its first Pentium-compliant chipset that supports the PC133 specification. The Apollo is also the first chipset to be manufactured under VIA’s recent foundry deal with National Semiconductor Corp.
PC133, the memory specification that VIA has championed as a real-world alternative to Intel’s preferred Rambus chips, refers to the increase in operating speed of a PC’s front-side-bus (FSB) and memory bus from 100MHz to 133MHz. VIA says that support for PC133 SDRAM delivers up to a 33% increase in memory performance over PC100 types. The chipset, which will also be available in 66MHz and 100MHz versions, supports Pentium III, II and Celeron CPUs.
However, as far as Intel is concerned, VIA and NatSemi are on distinctly shaky legal ground with the production of the new chipset. Intel started a patent infringement suit against VIA and revoked the Taiwanese chip design house’s x86 technology license in late June. VIA has tried to circumvent this action by buying NatSemi’s Cyrix x86 PC processor unit and signing NatSemi as a foundry partner. According to Intel, NatSemi’s x86 license is exclusive and cannot be passed to VIA. Chuck Malloy, Intel’s legal spokeperson said that as far as his company was concerned VIA and NatSemi can’t make the chipset. Asked if NatSemi would be dragged into the VIA lawsuit, Malloy replied that he was certain they’ll be part of the case in some form or fashion. No dates have yet been set for the hearing. á
