Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (
More info?)
On 16 Nov 2004 12:10:28 -0800, yjkhan@gmail.com (ykhan) wrote:
>George Macdonald <fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote in message news:<uahip09a4l0lnujif6180pdehv8e4pks9n@4ax.com>...
>> From what I've read in various places, Serverworks/Broadcom was trying to
>> negotiate a deal with Intel, involving an intra-company "IP firewall",
>> which would have allowed them to do both Intel and AMD chipsets. There's a
>> suggestion that Intel got pissed at such a move and rather than negotiate,
>> decided to terminate the license. Broadcom and Intel also do not have a
>> history of friendly collaboration, following all the extended legal
>> tussles.
>
>Nobody gets along with Intel. It puts Nvidia's decision to not even
>bother with a Pentium chipset into some greater light. They knew they
>wouldn't get along with Intel, so they didn't even bother with
>negotiating a license with them, and never even tried to design
>anything for them. Why bother when there are much more reasonable
>partnering opportunities, like AMD?
nVidia also knew the license for the FSB "technology" would never be free
from Intel. With AMD they just had to join the Hypertransport consortium.
What's funny just now is that VIA is selling Intel P4 chipsets which cannot
be officially rated above 533MT/s but they are umm, touted as err, "very
overclockable".;-)
>ATI on the other hand started out trying to make its fortune on Intel
>chipsets, and put the AMD chipsets on the backburner to concentrate on
>Intel. Brought their Intel chipsets out, and found out that Intel was
>already parked on their marketshare. Now they have come to compete in
>the AMD market after having their noses bloodied a little bit.
Well Intel actually produced a respectable integrated graphics chip
themselves so that opportunity was cut off at the pass. A bit late to jump
into the AMD chipset market and VIA has actually done a very good job there
so there's pretty strong price pressure, especially at the low end of the
market.
>> OTOH the Serverworks Opteron chipset effort has gone quiet for some months
>> now - nothing since June that I've seen and I wonder how much talent they
>> have left to pull it off. AFAIK they hadn't done anything much on the
>> Intel side either since the big uproar around the departure of the original
>> Serverworks principals, Raju Vegesna et.al.. I believe it was also
>> mentioned that Duane Dickhut had (been) moved on too so the status of the
>> "team" looks kinda uncertain.
>
>I'm not sure they are expected to keep putting out press releases
>about their chipset.
IMO it would be reasonable for them to have made some noise by now - Fall
was mentioned as a timeframe for "something" and even if they don't have
the actual item yet, every company has marketroids who love to make
optimistic noises... C.F. Intel.
It would certainly be appropriate,
IMO, to be hearing about prototype and sample stage schedules as well as
uptake by system developers... especially considering that there is
additional lead time to actually engineer mbrds around the product.
> Their original announcement suggested that they
>have collaborated with Sun to produce a Opteron super-chipset (greater
>than 8 processors). Sun has made some small announcements that they
>are now ready to make use of the technology they obtained from
>purchasing the Kelia startup. Kelia was apparently working on
>multi-way Opteron servers, so it's likely that there is a connection
>between the Serverworks chipset and the Kelia servers. The big-iron
>Serverworks chipsets will be exclusive to Sun for a little while. The
>regular Serverworks chipsets will not be any different than any other
>chipset for Opteron, supporting upto 8 processors.
I'm not optimistic about Sun making much out of that opportunity - doesn't
feel right to me.
>Plus with the Newisys Horus announcement, there seems to be some level
>of competition to see who finishes first with a super-chipset, so they
>probably don't want any details leaking out about their progress.
>
>As for the old Serverworks principals, I wonder if they left because
>they were not pleased with the deterioration of their relationship
>with Intel under Broadcom? It was obvious that this was going to
>happen if they got involved with Broadcom, considering
>Broadcom/Intel's history. They were probably just looking for the
>quick, big payout without considering the future of their company
>first. Oh well, despite the Intel relationship meltdown, they are
>probably now well positioned to start a new life as an Opteron chipset
>maker.
The "difference" between the Serverworks guys and Broadcom's management was
unusually public - the accounts were quite blunt and made it sound rather
nasty - though of course details were never released. I also haven't been
able to find anything on Raju Vegesna which would indicate he has taken up
a new venture. I'd gotten the impression that he and a couple of others,
who also left, were the real driving force behind Serverwork's success.
Daytripper certainly didn't think much of the replacement - the curiously
named Dick... err... hut
- and AFAIK, he'd been working closely with
them on system development.
Rgds, George Macdonald
"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
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