By Marius Meland

Law360, New York (July 18, 2005, 12:00 AM ET) -- Privately held Amberwave Systems Corp. has sued chip maker Intel Corp. for allegedly infringing a patent for enhancing the performance of semiconductor devices.

Amberwave, which develops technology for making strained silicon, claims that Intel is infringing its intellectual property as part of the strained-silicon technology used in Intel's 90nm Pentium microprocessors.

Strained silicon is a performance-enhancing material for an array of semiconductor-based products, which increases the mobility of charged carriers in semiconductor devices by “stretching” or “straining” the silicon lattice.

“For years, Intel has been improving...