SiS licenses IBM ‘design and process’ patents
Not saying why or for what, though
Posted in Channel, 7th March 2001 11:21 GMT
Taiwan's Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) tersely announced it has shaken hands with IBM on a "comprehensive" patent cross-licensing deal.
It didn't say much about what technology the deal covers, beyond noting that includes "design and process-related patents".
That suggests that SiS is getting hold of IBM's copper interconnect and silicon-on-insulator technology. It might even include certain PowerPC designs, we would speculate.
Follow that one through, and the deal looks increasingly like SiS is being signed to produce chipsets for IBM hardware or - and this is really pushing the boat out - chips and chipsets for Nintendo's upcoming PowerPC-based GameCube console.
But whatever the deal eventually turns out to involve, it certainly hints at interesting things happening in SiS. ®
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