Author: Tim Mann
Date: 16:34:04 06/12/98
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>>>I think they were bought by Compaq, but will still produce the Alpha >>>(and later generations) for some time. Intel has some access to >> >>Huh. At the Intel employee orientation some guy told me about reworking >>the current Alpha fabs to Pentium II fabs. Maybe this was wishful >>thinking. > >I'm not sure of the exact Intel/Alpha relation. Here's the story. - We sold our fab line (in other words, our chip factory) to Intel. Fab lines are very expensive to operate, and it is much more economical for a company that makes many different semiconductor products to operate one than for a company that makes just a few. This makes us a "fabless semiconductor company", the same model as Sun (with Sparc), SGI/MIPS, and several other companies use. - Intel has a contract to manufacture Alphas for us for several years. The contract is nonexclusive; we are free to hire other chip manufacturing companies to make Alphas for us too. We definitely have such deals under investigation; I don't know if anything has been consummated or announced. - We **have not** sold the Alpha design or technology to Intel. The Alpha design teams continue to work for us, and they are designing new generations of Alpha chips. The rights to the technology remain with us. (We do have a patent cross-licensing agreement with Intel, but the agreement specifically says that Intel can't use our patents to design their own Alphas. Also, some of our Alpha intellectual property is in the form of trade secrets, not patents, and Intel has no access to those.) It is wrongheaded to talk about whether Intel will "scrap" Alpha, no matter whether your opinion is positive or negative. That is simply not Intel's decision to make! They could choose not to make Alphas for us anymore after their contract is up. That would not trouble us a bit; we could easily find other manufacturers, and might do so anyway if we can get a better deal than Intel gives us. - Finally, as of yesterday, "we" are Compaq: Compaq has bought Digital. Compaq is not going to "scrap" Alpha either; Alpha was one of the major attractions that led them to buy us. By the way, Digital actually has more employees than Compaq, so I expect the combined company to retain a strong Digital flavor. --Tim Mann
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