The skinny: When ailing DEC charged Intel last May with infringing on its speedy Alpha chip, pundits laughed, calling the suit a desperate act. Sure, the Alpha was hot, but why would Intel, ruler of microprocessors, need to steal its innards? (Analysts estimate that Digital ships 300,000 Alpha chips a year, while Intel moves a total of 65 million of its brainy items.) Now the last laugh belongs to . . . both companies, as apparently the lawsuit opened negotiations to a mutually beneficial deal. Digital dumps its unprofitable chip operation. And Intel picks up a ““fab’’ plant for less than it would cost to build a new one. So what started out as a nasty lawsuit is now another brick in Intel leader Andy Grove’s unscalable wall. ““The winners are DEC, Intel and the industry,’’ says Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Dataquest, ““and the losers are the lawyers.''
