VIA to build own Pentium 4

VIA is going to build its own Pentium 4, or near as dammit the company has told Microprocessor Forum visitors. Not content with allegedly developing Pentium 4 motherboards without a license, then creating a whole new company to sell them, VIA now intends to build a director competitor to Intel's flagship desktop processor, cloning the very way it does business in the process. The subject is called CZA, The Register reports, and will run at 2GHz with an 18-stage pipeline and a "Pentium 4 bus" (we're not sure about that one). It will be based on P4 design concepts and will fab at 0.10 micron before 2003-2004. Is it me, or is that an astonishingly bad idea? Pentium 4 was released, to the dismay of journalists everywhere, a slower chip clock-for-clock than its competitors. By 2003-2004, Intel's chips will probably have hit 4GHz, and will probably have seen enough revisions to overcome the embarrassing truth that in its current state it does less work per clock cycle than Pentium III did. It does less work per clock than Pentium III because the original design had to be ripped to shreds in the interests of economic sanity, and even then it cost a bomb. The idea of developing a chip based on Pentium 4, to debut at speeds the original P4 hit two years previously isn't exactly sound business sense. VIA have a history of making slower parts than their competitors, and they rarely sell to the desktop market in quantities that deserve attention, and yet the company persists with them. We offer them full marks for creating one of the coolest-running chips in the industry, but is a P4 license really more expensive than the sort of damage Intel could do to them in the long run? Related Feature - VIA to produce its own motherboards

Source - The Register