Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1999/04/22/why_coppermine_is_aluminiummine/

Why Coppermine is Aluminium-mine

Because Intel's not copper-bottomed

By Mike Magee

Posted in On-Prem, 22nd April 1999 08:02 GMT

Cunning marketing plans are behind Intel's decision to label its upcoming technology Coppermine, sources close to the company can reveal. Although Intel has committed itself to producing copper technology in future iterations of its IA-64 technology, it was determined that IBM, Motorola and others should not steal its thunder, we can reveal. After the IBM propaganda coup that it would be able to produce chips with copper-interconnect technology, Intel found itself wrong-footed. So much so that Albert Yu, a senior VP of Intel's architecture division, said at the Intel Developer Forum last September that even his mother asked him why IBM had copper technology and Intel did not. Yu and others at the corporation then decided to codename their future technology in such a way so as not to lose face. Coppermine uses aluminium technology. ® See also Yu: my mother asked me why we didn't use copper Katmai out of the bag