Intel Donates Pentium Chip License to U.S. Government

Intel Corp.’s decision to offer a royalty-free license of its Pentium microprocessor to the U.S. government, announced Tuesday, should speed prospects for space exploration and improve the durability of advanced reconnaissance and communications satellites, according to Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson.

Speaking at a news conference at Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Richardson said the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque will “radiation-harden” the microchips for use in satellites, space probes and nuclear weapons. (Radiation found in the upper atmosphere, in deep space or caused by a nuclear explosion in space can render unprotected processors useless.)

“In the next five to 10 years, we will be plumbing the depths of the oceans on Europa” with robots using “rad-hard” Pentium processors, said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, referring to one of the moons of the planet Jupiter, which has large bodies of water on its surface.

The donation by Intel will save the government many millions of dollars in development costs, Richardson said. It will also allow the government to use a wide range of commercial software compatible with Intel’s technology, which dominates the microprocessor market.

A consortium of government agencies, including the Energy Department, NASA and the Air Force, will jointly contribute $64 million in research and development costs for the program, which is predicted to take four years to produce a final product.

Today’s hardened chips are based on decade-old technology, leading to critical deficiencies in processing power. Hardening more advanced microprocessors should yield cheaper, smaller, yet more capable spacecraft, according to Keith Hall, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space and director of the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates many of the nation’s spy satellites.

“This is going to improve the intelligence quotient of our vehicles by a factor of 10,” Goldin said.

Even so, the processors produced by Sandia will pack far less punch than today’s top-of-the-line Pentiums.

Although the fastest personal computers boast processor speeds of 400 megahertz or higher, the rad-hard chips will run no faster than 200 MHz, according to Leon Alkalai, director of the Center for Integrated Space Microsystems at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, a participant in the research. But this will be sufficient for the more specialized uses in spacecraft, he said.

Intel will provide some engineering and technical support to Sandia scientists, along with the license, in exchange for the opportunity to commercialize the results of the program at a later date.

“There is no financial transaction at all” between the company and the government, Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett said.