“The struggle has pitted the chipmaker and its allies, Sun
Microsystems and Dell Computer, against another group led by IBM,
HP, and Compaq Computer. The dispute has held up the design of
coming generations of high-performance computers called
servers.”
“Industry sources have said that after Sun called for a
deadline in the merger talks, negotiators settled on a merger plan,
which now is awaiting a vote.”
“The Intel camp favors a standard called Next-Generation
Input/Output, or NGIO, whereas HP, IBM, and Compaq back Future I/O.
The plan, when approved, will govern how equipment such as network
cards or disk systems plug into the servers.”