Intel deems SiS worthy of P4 chipset licence

Taiwan's Silicon Integrated Systems has been granted one of Intel's Pentium 4 chipset licences.

SiS is one of the Taiwan's three key chipset developers. Of the others, Acer Labs was granted a licence by Chipzilla last month, and long-time Intel enemy VIA reckons it has the right to build P4 chipsets thanks to the licences it acquired when it bought SonicBlue/S3's graphics chip division.

VIA's marketshare far outweighs those of SiS and Acer Labs.

SiS will sample its P4 chipset in Q3. The company reckons volume production will follow a month after that. It's not yet known what memory technology the chipsets will support, but with Intel's Brookdale chipset supporting PC-133 SDRAM - which is going to do wonders for P4 performance, we're sure - and the RDRAM-supporting 850 chipset, SiS may well go for DDR. Not that Chipzilla would be too chuffed about if it did.

"By signing this agreement, we hope to accelerate the adoption and proliferation of the Pentium 4 processor," said senior SiS VP Shing Wong. Chipzilla hopes so too - it claims the ramp up of P4 production will be the steepest in its history.

Intel has already licensed SiS to make chipsets that support its 0.13 micron Pentium III chip, codenamed Tualatin. ®

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