Intel to Leave SiS Without License on Quad Pumped Bus

by Anton Shilov
11/11/2002 | 08:38 AM

As we remember, Intel plans to aggressively invest in deployment of its new semiconductor manufacturing processes in the following years, however, their gross margin estimates for 2003 and 2004 are not very high and they will be pretty hard to invest very heavily, since Intel usually invests a lot of money in research and development of such fundamental technologies like AGP and PCI Express. In order to remain profitable even in 2003, when the PC market may not recover, according to analysts, Intel will have to sell more of its products. They have already succeeded in expanding the market share of the CPUs and now they have to work on the fields of communications and chipsets. On the former market Intel does not have so strong influence, as on the latter, hence, it is quite logical for them to start with the core-logic devices.

At the moment, Intel, SiS and VIA Technologies produce chipsets for the Pentium 4 processors. VIA Technologies does it illegally and their market share is said to be very small, SiS cannot make a lot of semiconductors due to the their limited manufacturing capabilities and Intel holds the biggest share of this market. According to The Inquirer, Intel wants to cancel SiS’ license on Quad Pumped Bus and expand their presence on Asian core-logic field.<%BANNER[article]%>

The report states that Intel plans to withdraw the license from SiS sometimes in the second quarter 2003. This fact may reveal some of the possible reasons why Intel plans to cancel the license.

• Intel simply does not want any rivals on the chipset market and will withdraw the license with any means. In fact, Intel has legal rights to cancel SiS’ license. Earler this year SiS sold their SiS645DX core-logic to some of the Chinese manufacturers under “XP4” brand-name without paying Intel the fees (see this news-story). Intel may eventually remember SiS its infringement of the terms of license and leave SiS without any rights to produce any chipsets for the Quad Pumped Bus.
• Intel does not want the rival to make the chipsets for 667MHz Quad Pumped Bus processors. Since the company wants the partners to license every new speed of the mentioned bus, they may simply not sell SiS the appropriate rights or offer very unfavourable terms the Hsinchu-based company will not accept. The CPUs with 667MHz QP Bus will be launched in early Q3, hence, Intel will leave SiS without license just on time in the second quarter. In this case SiS will only have to concentrate on the platforms with 400 and 533MHz PSB.

The whole piece of information is unofficial and the facts were not confirmed both by Intel and SiS.