Intel’s agreement to pay $300 million to settle a patent dispute with a tiny chip design company is a vindication for a Silicon Valley technologist who was once considered one of the region’s visionaries, then vanished from the scene.

The technologist is John Moussouris, a 55-year-old physicist and computer designer, who in 1988 formed a company called MicroUnity as an early effort to bring about a convergence of computing and conventional audio and video media. During the early 1990s, MicroUnity was briefly one of Silicon Valley’s highest fliers, with backing from Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and the cable industry.

With more than $100 million in financing, it embarked on the unheard-of strategy of building a chip factory in Silicon Valley, long after most of the region’s companies had given up on the idea, instead building new plants in Asia or other low-cost manufacturing areas. But by the mid-1990s MicroUnity’s efforts had foundered.

Click through to the whole article. There’s lots of interesting detail.

As part of its quarterly earnings report, Intel announced on Tuesday that it had settled a patent suit brought last year by MicroUnity. Of the $300 million to be paid, $140 million was charged against earnings in Intel’s most recent quarter.

The deal assures Intel of access to MicroUnity technology, which is used in Intel’s current family of Pentium chips, and to patents that MicroUnity has developed more recently. MicroUnity holds 56 patents and has published 14 additional patent applications.

The agreement covers features like hyperthreading, which allows software to perform multiple tasks more efficiently, and processing designs for handling video and audio data. An Intel spokesman, Chuck Mulloy, said Wednesday that the settlement was “in the best interest of the company and the shareholders.”

Moussouris was a protégé of a legendary IBM computer designer, John Cocke, and in 1984 co-founded Mips Computer Systems, a pioneering microprocessor developer. In 1988, he assembled a small team of skilled computer designers and set about creating a style of computing that would later become known as “media processing.”

Several years ago, Moussouris said his goal was to create a generation of technology more broadly accessible than current computers.

“I dreamed of building a computer my grandmother would enjoy,” he said.

Nice to see that he prevailed. It ain’t easy — and I wonder what he’ll come up with, next. He certainly doesn’t sound like the kind of person who would take the money and go live on a desert island.