LinuxToday Australia : Open Source Chips?

[ Thanks to Niki
Scevak for this link. ]

“There’s little doubt chipmaker Intel is very serious about
wooing the Linux community. How serious? Well, until last week the
details of the forthcoming 64-bit Mercred or Itanium chip were top
secret. Then on Wednesday evening (Eastern Australia Time) the
company posted full specifications on a special website.”

“Take it from me; these specifications are pretty darn
comprehensive. There are many megabytes of technical looking PDF
files to download. Intel’s action effectively delivers the nearest
thing imaginable to an Open Source processor design.”

“Of course, there aren’t too many hackers out here in Linuxland
who have bedrooms, garages and college dorms containing the
necessary state of the art silicon foundries required to reverse
engineer revised, peer-reviewed versions of the Mercred processor.
So until K-mart starts stocking home processor fabrication plants I
think we can assume Intel isn’t exactly risking its long term
future by divulging this information.”

“On the other hand, we’re talking about the Intel that
usually known for excessive secrecy – company co-founder Andy
Grove’s 1996 book was called “Only the Paranoid Survive.”

Complete
Story