Intel hyperthreading shows Digital roots
C|Net | at | by Mike
Next month, Intel will bring its hyperthreading technology to desktops, another advance in the chip world that can be traced to Digital Equipment Corp. Although Digital often floundered when trying to sell its own chips, the defunct computing giant left behind technologies and engineers that are at the core of many recent and coming advances.
"There is all this cool technology coming out on PCs that came from Digital," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. Nonetheless, McCarron, among others, noted that these breakthroughs rarely helped Digital's bottom line. Digital was acquired by Compaq Computer in 1998, and its remnants became part of Hewlett-Packard earlier this year when HP completed its acquisition of Compaq.