Chip start-up's big payoff comes in, at last

Micro who?

That was the question many asked when Intel reported in its third-quarter earnings Tuesday that it would pay a $300 million charge to settle a lawsuit with MicroUnity, an eight-employee company in Santa Clara, Calif.

The deal, which brought an end to a patent-infringement suit filed by MicroUnity in March 2004, was the first some had heard of the company, which specializes in media processors. But for Silicon Valley veterans, the MicroUnity name conjured up memories of the high-tech business before the Internet era, when Packard Bell and Egghead Software strode the Earth and Google founder Larry Page was just another guy in high school.

"They were the Transmeta of their day," Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood said. Chipmaker Transmeta came on like gangbusters several years ago, promoting an energy-efficient processor for laptops, but ran into manufacturing problems and the dot-com bust.

In its suit, MicroUnity alleged that Intel had infringed on its patents with its use of extensions for multimedia and application threading, a process that lets a chip perform two tasks at once.

The settlement underlines the trend for small companies to seek revenue through patent lawsuits. In recent years, for example, Intel spent $675 million to put an end to a similar action by Intergraph. In MicroUnity's case, the deal illustrates how legal action can revive the promise of a once-hot company.

Founded in 1988 and drifting toward obscurity by 1997, MicroUnity was one of a number of companies touted as the next Intel. Its strategy revolved around developing chips that could process audio, video and similar streams of data inside TVs and other consumer electronics. Some theorized at the time that success in these new markets could shift the balance of power away from the PC.

"TVs, telephones and radios were all going to become digital," MicroUnity founder and CEO John Moussouris told CNET News.com on Wednesday. "We asked, 'What should a computer look like that can do the real work of a TV?'"

While other start-ups pursued the same strategy, MicroUnity had a better pedigree than most. A graduate of Harvard University and a Rhodes Scholar, Moussouris was also one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems, which made the MIPS chip used inside servers and workstations from Silicon Graphics Inc.

A decade ago, SGI's machines were celebrated for their performance, and the company landed many of the major contracts in Hollywood. (Other MIPS alumni from the era include Stanford president John Hennessy and Forest Baskett, a partner at New Enterprise Associates.)

Millions in venture money flowed in from Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, TCI (Now AT&T Broadband), Time Warner, Cox Communications, Motorola and Comcast, among others. Moussouris' Harvard roommate, Will Hearst, now a partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, was an early investor.

Moussouris published articles in several prominent publications. MicroUnity also opened its own chip fabrication facility, a luxury most processor companies can no longer afford.

Media processors, however, never fully caught on. General-purpose PC chips steadily became more powerful, thanks to the increasing

[retiarius]

windfall for creatives, as well as execs/investors?

in addition to the hardware patents, microunity
harbored some keen software talent as well,
discerned not just from an interview i had there once,
but from various academic publications.

in particular, here's a tip o' the hat to the inimitable
harry massalin, compiler-writer and piggyback athlete
extraordinaire. v.i.z.

http://www.garyandrewpoole.com/qua.html

is a must read for microunity fans.

[retiarius]

henry massalin, of superoptimizer infamy

s/harry/henry/g

in prior comment, thanx.