HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Intergraph Corp. late today announced that it has filed another suit against Intel Corp., this time charging that Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor technology infringes upon Intergraph's RISC-based MPU patents.
Intergraph's suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, claims that Intel has infringed upon two patents that defines key aspects of parallel instruction computing (PIC). Developed by Intergraph's former Advanced Processor Division, the PIC technology is alleged to be an essential component in Intel's new Itanium chip.
Intergraph used this technology in its C5 Clipper microprocessor line, which is no longer used by the company.
The C5 Clipper microprocessor was originally intended for Intergraph's next generation of workstations. But in 1993, Intel and Intergraph agreed to work together to introduce an x86-based workstation, and Intergraph ceased further development on the C5 Clipper. In 1994, Intergraph introduced the industry's first Pentium-based workstations.
"Intel's Itanium-based products, which are just now becoming commercially available in the market, infringe upon Intergraph's patented PIC technology, developed almost a decade before Intel introduced the Itanium," said Intergraph Chairman and CEO Jim Taylor.
The move represents Intergraph's latest suit against Intel. In November 1997, Intergraph sued Intel for infringing on its Clipper patents, which define the architecture of a microprocessor's cache memory management.
Intergraph claimed that its patented Clipper technology is a crucial feature of the Pentium family of processors and systems. That lawsuit will be heard in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Alabama, but the date for the jury trial has not yet been set.
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