AMD to pay more money to IBM

CHIP FIRM AMD said it's extended its agreement to buy in IBM technology until 2011.

It didn't say how much it will have to pay for this.

The expansion includes AMD taking advantage of IBM's R&D on new transistors, interconnects, lithography and die to package.

So we expect IBM will start pushing Opteron chips as part of a quid-pro-quo, right?

Well, that ain't necessarily so because at IBM the headbone is not always connected to the neckbone. When IBM had a deal with Cyrix 10 years ago, it maintained that the chips the Richardson firm had designed and re-packaged as IBM Microelectronics were better than the Cyrix chips.

But not only that, although the Cyrix designed chip was way better than anything Intel had to offer at the time, IBM didn't sell it in its own PCs.

There was a reason for that then, and the reason for that still exists now. It's called the Intel Inside campaign. No wonder that Cyrix had this mock gravestone in the foyer of its Richardson HQ. µ