Word: microchipping
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Behind every great fortune," Balzac wrote, "there is a crime." That's the contention of the stunning lawsuit filed last week by Digital Equipment Corp. against microchip giant Intel. The great fortune in this case comes courtesy of the Pentium microprocessing chip, which runs 85% of the earth's personal computers and helped feed Intel $6.45 billion in revenues in the first quarter of 1997 alone. The alleged crime is Intel's "willful infringement" on 10 Dig-ital patents in building the Pentium series. And the suggested punishment: damages that could run into the billions and an injunction against continued...
...infringement claim against Intel. Digital followed a day later with full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and San Jose Mercury News. Wall Street took the bait, wrist slapping Intel's soaring stock down $6 and backslapping Digital up $2 in the belief that the microchip David wouldn't rile Goliath unless it had a really, really good case...
That will be music to Andy Grove's ears. Grove, CEO of microchip colossus Intel, has a clear aim in partnering with CAA on the media lab: plant the "content community" with seed capital and hope like hell something grows. His $16 billion company is ramping up production capacity to the tune of $3.5 billion a year. But how exactly, Grove wonders, is Intel going to persuade people to drop another $3,000 each time a new, extra-ultra-powerful PC gets invented, instead of sticking with last year's merely ultra-powerful model? "You can't push 100 million...
...microchip-driven, infrared-transmitting cards are programmable by the wearer, who is asked to input responses to five questions designed to triangulate one's heart, soul and Q rating. Sample question: With whom would you rather have dinner? a) O.J. Simpson, Marcia Clark and Johnnie Cochran; b) Marvin Minsky, Noam Chomsky and Jerome Lettvin; or c) Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson and Yo-Yo Ma. (I'd pick b, unless I was looking for a book deal...
...California can't arbitrarily lower its cost of labor or real estate. Intel, the world's largest maker of microchips, chose Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the site for a new $1.3 billion semiconductor plant, stiffing its own headquarters location in pricey Silicon Valley. New Mexico sweetened the deal further by giving Intel a 30-year exemption from property taxes for the plant, which Intel says will create 3,000 jobs. The exemption formed the bulk of a 30-year, $566 million incentive package from New Mexico that works out to nearly $190,000 per job. (New Mexico's unemployment rate...