Russian chip scientist Babaian outlines Elbrus future

Everyone is afraid to compete with Intel, he says

By Mike Magee • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 1st April 1999 16:45 GMT

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Exclusive Professor Boris Babaian said today that he needed venture capital support to show the world his superior chip architecture to Merced. At the same time, Babaian laughed at the April Fool's Joke slashdot.org perpetrated about Linus Torvald joining his company because Finland and Russia were close, geographically.

Babaian, a man with a sense of humour despite obstacles to the Merced competitor being fabbed up, said: "We are a team who designed [a similar technology] to EPIC in 1991. We had already fabricated a computer in 1991. "Our technology is good but our fabrication facilities are very poor. We fabricated this in the days of the Iron Curtain but because of the circumstances it was very difficult to finish the project."

He said the technology it is now fashioning is three times the speed of Merced. "The microprocessor is in a very advanced stage of development," he confirmed. However, although the technology is convincing, it is very hard for his company to persuade the world. "Everyone is very afraid to compete with Intel," he said. "If you look at Intel, it hasn't actually been very successful with many of its technologies," the professor said. "The x86 just happened and the i860 and the i960 were not very successful at all." He said: "Intel is a genius in business, but it's not very successful at designing chips."

He told The Register that he was speaking to other chip companies other than Intel at present. After the conversation, we concluded that perhaps Compaq and HP itself could be interested in fabbing his super Merced up. ®

ex-Soviets seek $$$ for Merced killer — Transmeta linked

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