ATi just announced that they got licence to produce integrated chipsets for the Pentium-M platform. Unfortunately, the do not give any details about this licence in their official pressrelease (which can be found here.
X-bit labs posted a rather interesting remark on this release:
“As far as I know, Intel Pentium M processor utilises the same 400MHz Quad Pumped Bus as used for the Pentium 4 platforms. ATI Technologies got the license on the bus in early 2001 after signing cross-license agreement with Intel, so, at the moment I do not quite understand why additional agreement reached today was necessary.”
Although there is the “power optimized bus”, a new feature in the Pentium-M series of microprocessors, it could also be that Intel just charges each new version of their quad pumped bus to its partners.
You can find X-bit’s comments here.
