Intel fabbing for HP

Updated Intel has now confirmed it is acting as a foundry for its partner Hewlett Packard. Our resident cynic, Pete Sherriff, said: "It must be an Alpha". Intel's building Alpha chips for Compaq-DEC, he said. But Terry Shannon, industry analyst who runs Shannon knows DEC discounted that. Alpha chips already have an enormous amount of cache on them. It's not Alpha chips. And it's not Transmeta Five minutes after posting the original story, a perceptive reader came up with the possible answer. He said: "It's not Transmeta, because it's Intel's buddy HP. Intel fabs the PA-8500, as any attentive comp.arch reader knows (someone posted a couple of months ago pointing out that the published process characteristics for the 8500 are uncannily similar to the characteristics for Intel's fabrication processes). If Intel isn't fabbing the 8500, then who is? And the 8500 is famed for its huge L1 cache." A representative from Intel confirmed it. He said: "We don't seek third party opportunities but if someone asks us to fab for them we will look at it on a case-by-case basis. We are a foundry for HP and have been so for well over a year." A Register pin is in the post to our reader. ®