A little inside note on this. The Exponential chips were killed off by this
arrogant dickhead named Steve Bannerman. His reasoning was typical Apple
and is known as "not invented here" syndrome.
By Michael Kanellos
September 15, 1997, 1:05 p.m. PT
Exponential Technologies, a now-defunct chip vendor
that just a
year ago represented the cutting edge in
microprocessors, has
filed suit against former ally Apple for allegedly
breaking off a
supply contract earlier this year, a move that
ultimately forced
Exponential to shutter most of its operations.
The suit, which was filed in Santa Clara County
Superior Court
in California, seeks $500 million in damages from
Apple under
nine causes of action. Michael Kalkstein, a senior
partner at
Graham & James, represents Exponential. News of the
suit came
via a note sent by Exponential to former employees.
Early this year, Exponential had been set to supply
Apple with
superfast PowerPC X704 processors running at speeds of
up to
533 MHz. Gil Amelio, the former Apple CEO, at one
point even
demonstrated a system with the chip during a speech.
Conceivably, chips based on an Exponential design
would have
expanded the amount of software that could run on Apple
machines.
In May, however, Apple said it would not use the
Exponential
X704 chip in its computers. Former employees of the
company
said that signaled the demise of the company.
Phil Schiller, vice president of desktop and server
product
marketing for Apple, said at the time that Apple dropped
Exponential because its chips did not provide significant
performance advantages. "We will not ship an Exponential
processor in our product line in the next year. We
just didn't see
any benefit to our customers," he said then.
Interestingly, technology pioneered by Exponential is
similar to
the designs Intel plans to incorporate into its
next-generation
64-bit Merced chip and were the subject of an intensely
competitive silent auction earlier this summer. An
undisclosed
purchaser picked up the patents for around $10
million, said
various sources.
Katie Cotton, an Apple spokeswoman, reported that the
company
has not been served with the complaint yet and had no
comment.
-
Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.
-Toa Te Ching
<>tbyars@earthlink.net <>