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Intel Submits Patent Covering Itanium Instructions
chris.bitmead writes: "Rather than submit garden-variety claims to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Intel is
trying to patent the functions carried out by specific instructions. In doing so, the company appears to be, in effect, trying to patent the IA-64 instruction set itself." Is this an attempt to block out even reasonable competition, or is this just "business as usual" as at least one voice in the story says?
Really? If so what exactly are they charging it on, and how do they count it?
> IA64 blows. Nobody uses it nor will they ever. Time to grow up, intel.
Nobody uses it? Well since it hasn't really been released yet that is kinda of understandable.
Also have you actually looked at the instruction set? They have some really novel stuff. If it is new then go for it, patent it.
However like a previous poster said, the patent system would be great if it was 3-5 years patents, not 20 year patents.
Benno
One interesting design was that of the PIOS One, which put the north bridge and the CPU(s) on a daughterboard that plugged into a PCI bus. Unfortunately it never got passed the prototype stage but it would have made for an easy way of changing CPU families and even changing the number of processors (up to four).
This doesn't look like patenting the instruction set at all. That would be utterly anticompetitive, as it wouldn't allow competition by manufacturers wanting to make their own chips with compatible instructions sets. It wouldn't even allow simulators to be created by software tools companies, and arguably even compiler writers would be caught by it. I don't think they'd be so blinkered to attempt that.
No, this looks like merely a patent on particular aspects of the implementation of certain instructions. As long as the implementation details aren't generic catch-all ones that every competitor would have to implement identically, this seems relatively innocuous as patents go.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Wow, the ever insightful comments of an AC!! I love the attention you're giving me, so keep it up! If you didn't find it interesting, why would you keep bothering to reply? Is it *your* personal quest with me?? Awwwww yeah!!!
Then there was the owners' secretary, who - to quote the Partner on the job - "liked the cut of my jib" - and hinted about her upcoming weekend in Palm Springs.
She's just doing what it takes to survive, since she's just been abandoned in her existing relationship with her bosses; her entire world has just come crashing down, and she's desperately flailing about to try to attach herself to another providing male. And you, as the white knight who's ridden in on your white horse to save her and what's left of the company from this fate, are the perfect opportunity.
If I may hazard a guess, she's probably in her late thirties, not so old that she's given in to societal pressures and renounced her status as "spinster" by marrying the first dweeb with a paycheck who comes along, but not so young that she's holding out indefinitely, as if somehow her hand won't be forced by the same society that grinds us all up and spits us out and won't take no for an answer.
-- Anne Marie
While they're at it, maybe they can patent faulty division. I remember that innovation of theirs back from the Pentium.
Then if anyone does that to us again, Intel can sue them for us...
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I'm the only one, eh? This guy claims he beat me to it. I must admit, your trolling was pretty good with that one, but not good enough!!! There have been a lot of ACs posting about Siggy's new account, so how about trying another angle on your weak trolls.... haha!!!
Does anyone else remember when IBM tried basically this same thing with MicroChannel Architecture, and other companies came out with EISA and made it an open standard. MCA died the death. Will the same thing happen here?
never claimed I wanted karma, fool. And I'm not a cheap whore, I'm an educated virgin!
Of course, there's been transitions like this before (Windows 3.1, VESA, Win32, DirectX, Linux, SDRAM, OSS, etc.). This transition is like the previous ones; it requires patience and judgment (though a fat wallet certainly helps).
Personally, I like how Intel is patenting IA64; that way, there won't be any sleazy IA64 imitations out there, as was the case with the K6, IDT WinChip, and Cyrix's entire line of CPUs (quote from the Quake manual: "Computers without an FPU will not run Quake... at all. This includes the now infamous "Pentium-class performance, for less money" knock-off chip [Cyrix 5x86]). Yes, this might be an assembly/C/C++ programmers nightmare, but isn't that why programmers are always learning new things? No? Well they should be; maybe that's why amateur programming stinks so much.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The federal government can only be sued if it gives you permission to sue it. I think that's in the constitution. So I guess that you could ask the USPO for permission to sue them? Or do you need to ask someone else? (I don't believe that that is specified.)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
- Intel iAPX32
- Fairchild/Intergraph Clipper
- Motorola/IBM/Apple PowerPC
- MIPS Rx000
- Digital/Compaq Alpha
and have announced support for Intel iAPX64 when it ships. So,it looks like the problem is that nobody buys other architectures since none of these sold well enough to keep in development.Will you give up your $90k job for $35k to work for USPTO?
The solution to this is to axe the $200-300k (or whatever it is) that US Senators bring in per year, after they retire and put that into things like raising salaries on USPTO employees and maybe something like, I dunno, teachers.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Now, don't interpret this as saying that the PentiumX is a good CISC instrution set, it isn't, but why do we not have ANY choices besides having to reinvent 80% of the instruction set in software every time?
True, but lets be honest. Most Linux people (including /.ers) run Linux on standard Intel, "Designed for Windows" hardware. Any advantage of portability to other architectures is not seen in practice since nobody bothers with any other options.
not speaking for my employer. whoever that may be.
Hmm, patents used to protect IP and force other competitors to come up with own ideas!
Could it be this is actually a Slashdot story cheering the advantages of patent law?
Oh my god!!
<grub> Reading
For Intel, with AMD breathing down their necks, filing more patents is the smart thing to do. Anything you can do to slow down the other guy will enhance shareholders values, that is what this is all about. It is after all their R&D money and their researchers. As we saw time and again the USPTO is dumb enough to allow this sort of thing, so why not?
Remember, all corporations are out to make money, anything else are just unforeseen side effects.
====
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
One has to wonder what would have happened if Intel had patented the extended instruction set of the 80386... or the first Pentium chips. No clones? Would AMD or Transmeta ever existed as CPU manufacturers? This sort of thing scares me, as it indicates to me that we may miss out on something great (think of AMD today) in the future.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
A computational system in which an operational code (opcode) consisting of a sequence of numerical data instructs an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) to perform an operation on two operands, storing the resulting arithematic or logical result into either of the operands.
What is claimed is:
1. A computational system comprising an ALU (Arithematic Logic Unit), c a operational code decoder, memory bus interface, and microcoded control logic, wherein,
Arithematic Logic Unit further comprises circuitry to perform mathematic operations of addition, subtraction, increment, decrement, multiply, divide, and logic functions of AND, OR, XOR, right and left bit shift;
2. Operational code decoder comprises circuitry that extracts encoded information to direct the activity of the Arithematic Logic Unit (claim 1);
3. Memory bus interface that transfers the operands required by the ALU (claim 1) and instruction opcodes needed by the decoder (claim 2);
4. Microcoded Control Logic which sequences the timing and produces control signals with the proper timing to direct the activities of the ALU (claim 1), Opcode Decoder (claim 2), and Memory Bus Interface (claim 3).
Description Of The Invention
The present invention related to the operation of a computational device, used to execute computational tasks, wherein the computational task to be performed by be programmed by creating a list of operational codes.
.
.
.
maybe someone else wants to continue this... it's late and I'm getting tired...
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
"Can't use your instruction set?!? OK, we'll just download another..."
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
After reading this article, and looking at one of the patent mentioned, I'm going to hazzard a reasonable guess at exactly what's going on here:
The problem with this kind of patenting is that the "concept" is closely tied to the "implimentation". That is, the concept may be so narrowly circumscribed that any implimentation is an 'infringing' one.
Also unclear in this whole mess is how a software trap would fit in. Suppose Intel was granted the "broader" patent which covered not just the specific transistor layout of the interrupt return handler, but the more general case of returning interrupt context for IA64. Does this preclude software implimentations of that IA64 instruction (which would be particularly relevant to code-morphers like Transmeta, but even to AMD et al which do translation to microcode)?
I'm by far no Patent Lawyer. If the scope is the narrower one, I see no problem, and indeed, is well within the goal of patents. I'm alot let sanguine if the patent covers more than the circuit design, however.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Ok, I agree that any probems with the patent office stem from the politics behind the patent office. Goes for any government agency. To tell you the truth, shame and ostracism is probably as far as I'd be prepared to go in the fight against the information fascists. I just hope harder heads than mine are taking action on other fronts. I agree that all "intellectual property" is a commons, but I hate calling it IP. To me IP implies that it's natural state is to have one owner, and "stealing" it is a crime. I think that "stealing" it is ok and monopilising is the real crime. I think it differs from, say, a pasture, in that everyone can glut themselves on knowledge without taking any of it away from the rest of us. All you take away is monopoly power, that is, money.
Software patents delenda est.
__________________________________
all misspellings were intentional.
When I'm ready to move up to the 64 bit processors, I'm already banking on AMD's 64 bit solution
So, when do you suppose ordinary computer users, or for that matter, geeky computer users like myself, are going to be moving up to 64 bits? The jump from 16 bits to 32 bits is obvious -- lots of useful programs use more than the 64KB that 16 bits directly addresses, and the work-arounds to get to more memory on a 16 bit CPU were a pain. 32 bits gave us 4GB to address directly. I don't see myself needing more than 4GB of directly addressable memory space soon. 64 bits gives you something like a bazillion bytes.
I know that high-end servers sometimes utilize a massive amount of memory -- and clearly that is the market for 64 bit CPUs now. Will the technology filter down to the user-level anytime soon? If so, why?
Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
What? Why would you go on about microprogrammability in connection to IA-64? This is an important issue for high-end RISC processors since when, exactly?
In case you missed every conceivable opportunity to find any information on IA-64, I'd fill in the novelty as follows. Among general-purpose CPUs that hit the mainstream (please remember this bit before flaming me about Multiflow or your favorite DSP or graphics chip), the first implementations of IA-64 will be:
First VLIW-type chip, with at least some potential of avoiding the standard pitfalls of VLIW.
First CPU with extensive support for control and data speculation.
First CPU with register rotation for overhead-free software pipelining of loops.
These may or may not be good ideas. I suspect that some of the stuff that is in the IA-64 architecture will turn out to be a bad idea. Not so much because it's inherently stupid; more because some of the features are going to be hard for compiler writers to exploit, and may become underutilized.
However, no-one who knows anything about computer architecture would deny that the IA-64 is novel.
Companies A & B are in the same industry. Both have $100,000,000 budgeted for a new product.
Company A spends $99,900,000 developing a product (paying programmers and engineers) and spends the remaining $100,000 on marketing.
Company B spends $ 100,000 making a copy of Company A's product and spends their remaining $99,900,000 on marketing their copy.
Guess which one succeeds in the market?
Would you rather see those salaries go to marketing people or programmers/engineers?
This patenting of specific functions smacks of Microsoft tactics
Actually it smacks of Rambus tactics, which Intel has recently been decrying. Pot meet kettle?
Whatever you may say about Microsoft, abusive patenting doesn't seem to have been among their sins.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Oh, Brave New World, that has such people in it.
Simple evolution should not be patentable, period. Evolution of a concept in obvious ways is not novel.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Windsor, Ontario. 10.30.2008
A recent discovery by a research team from the University of Windsor in Ontario Canada has unlocked one of the secrets to the universe. A recent finding which is the first to quantify what had been previously known as "Dark Matter" has caused a stir amongst Venture Capitalists and Academics alike.
Academics are relieved that a previously misunderstood phenomenon has been resolved. Dr. S.Banndyd head of the Cosmology department at the University Of Windsor is proud of the team lead by Researcher Dr. B. Smith, "This marks a great achievement by the team, and they should be commended. The fundamental truth, now finally understood is marks a boon to human knowledge. The mystery of Dark Matter and gravity is finally revealed. We are ecstatic. But we really owe our discovery to 500 years of public knowledge and contributory research." Dr. Smith is quoted as saying "We knew this to exist, the interaction between DarkMatter and the rest of space, but had simply not been documented before. But we have finally put the facts on paper in a quantitatif manner." he later added "We are very proud - and will be going out for some WalkerVille Ale this eve."
The Head of the Corporatist Whoring Department Mr. F. Mehard is estatic. Citing the case law established in the United States in the earliest years of this century, where corporations were able to patent basic action and fundamental ideals. He feels this will be a boon in license revenue for the institution.
"We have spoken with an array of Venture Capitalists and lawyers, and are sure that a new startup will be founded to commercialize this information." said Mr F. Mehard. "The new corporation will likely be called Gravity Inc., we feel that our patent-filling-slave^H^H^H^H associate will process the request online this morning - we should have our patent by mid-day. This 'Dark-Matter'(TM) ® © which we have described plays such a fundamental part of "RealyGrabbyStuff(TM) ® ©." ReallyGrabbyStuff(TM) ® © is the new trade name chosen for Gravity, and Mr. F. Mehard feels his product will be a hit saying "We fully expect that our Team Of Rabid Lawyers(TM) ® © will have no problem extort^H^H^H^H^H^H closing license deals with the residents of the planet. Without our "ReallyGrabbyStuff"(TM) ® © every person on the planet would be lost to drift in space - and as such, they owe the privilege being Flaeterning(TM) ® © (the expression used when describing the application of "ReallyGrabbyStuff(TM) ® ©") to the new Gravity Inc. Corporation. We were the first to document this behavior completely, and as such are entitled to owning all application of said technology".
Mr. F. Mehard and the Team Of Rabbid Lawyers(TM) ® © then left he University aboard their Anti-ReallyGrabbyStuff(TM) ® © vehicle, bystanders were noticed as saying "boy are we lucky - maybe now we wont have to live in the sewers and eat rats." the departing dignitaries were then seen tossing small pieces of food(TM) ® © and other(TM) ® © stuff down at the hungry academics and students below.
Dont like this vision of the future? Then take control of your country from the bastards! Tell your friends/neighbours/relatives/coworkers to:
They figure, they better do it before someone else does. Of course with all the convenient secret patent 'licenses', intel will naturally be using this exclusively to sue AMD or anyone else trying to compete with them. Like I said, business as usual.
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GetSystemMetrics(SM_SECURE) == FALSE
For the record, IBM also had a patent on the ISA bus, as well such base standards like VGA, only that they were available for much more favorable licencing terms than MCA.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
an attempt to block out even reasonable competition AND is just "business as usual"
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"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
-Me
Compared to what? Other 32-bit architectures? Other 64-bit microcomputer achitectures? Or mainframe architectures, which happen to be 100% microprogrammable? It doesn't seem that novel to me.
Also, as I understand, it's pretty typical for patents on a CPU to be filed all in a burst around the same time the CPU's info's being rolled out to market. Part of the reason for this is that the patent disclosures themselves sit around in the pipeline, gradually making their way to the USPTO. Then the marketing-side of the company decides to do a Release to Market of some more details, so there's a sudden rush to flush the pipeline so that the company doesn't forego any patent protection on those patented ideas that may be presented in the RTM.
At least, that's how it looks like it works here for the patents I was involved with on TI's TMS320C6400 CPU. I won't comment further on the content of those patent applications, or the purpose behind them other than to say I think all the semiconductor companies play the same game here.
So, don't just single out Intel, 'kay? And put your conspiracy theories away. This is just business as usual, and its purpose is to give the originating company an advantage and a defensible barrier against direct competition by cloning. It just so happens that cloning is more important in Intel's world than many other worlds, so people get hypersensitive about it.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Program Intellivision!
Must be afraid of being like ZEROX.
The truth shall set you free!
I think you're pretty much on the money.
There is real scope for a massive industry split. Remember when IBM tried to reclaim the PC market with the PS/2 and "micro-channel architecture", a non-ISA bus which they had patented? (1987). The world of the PC just walked away from them and did its own thing, EISA and so on.
This could be the luckiest break that AMD will ever get.
Funny thing is that ther IS a 64bit Windows 2000 coming out soon, and acording to the Intel site they've been working in cooperation with Microsoft to create it more or less specifically for IA-64. Try doing your research rather than just being the typical Pro-Linux anti-MS type.
Economically, they must - the patents won't be licensed, so there is no other alternative but bankruptcy. I predicut x86's lifetime will be lengthened significantly by this development.
Anyone want to start the FISF (Free Instruction Set Foundation)?
What is Intel really trying to patent here? Not ideas, that's for sure. They're trying to patent low-level implementation details like how certain instructions impact data flow throughout the IC.
That is EXACTLY what you are supposed to patent. You are not suposed to patent "ideas". You are supposed to patent specific implementations. If you are correct (I haven't read the patent, not being fluent in legalese), then there is absolutely nothing wrong with this patent.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's no different than Transmeta's patenting, but I know, I know... Intel bad - Transmeta good.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
In other Intel news, The Reg has this hoomerous piece on Intel views on the P4 release schedule.
"Hello, Intel? Please connect me with Bud and Lou."
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Not the same motherboard, but rather differernt motherboards without a lot of modification between them. Thus, to make it easy to make different boards to support different chips... not to make 1 board to support them all.
Or, instead, we can allow the situation to continue to deteriorate until Congress steps in and changes the patent rules. That might be good... or it might be very, very bad. We just don't know.
-- Michael Chermside
why ? simple. ripping DVDs and other media. notice you cant create files over 2GB on 32 bit platforms. large files like DVD video cant be ripped easily without a 64 bit chip. and thats where it all will come down.
most of the stuff that intel has included in their IA-64 instruction set has been done before. VLIW was done during the 80's, there are ARM processors that have predicated instructions and just about every current processor has deep pipelines. the unique thing about intel is that they decided to put it all together. the bizarre thing is that they seem to have lost the plot. hp is recommending that it's customers don't go with the first generation of the Itanium chip (too slow compared with PA-RISC). this patent "should" be blown out of the water...
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
--
I like to watch.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but the entire purpose of patents is to encourage "innovation", right? So how is locking out other potential developers who might actually innovate something going to lead to further innovations?
Ah, encourages innovation only for the party who managed to get a patent filed _first_, huh?
Get rid of the patent system. It doesn't encourage innovation, it encourages greed.
Chaos rules man! (;(left handed emoticon)
:)
This will eventually cause harm to people and industry. When something finally hits people in the wallets then the government will take notice. Maybe this is that one last staw that will break the camels back. Maybe this will push congress into doing something about technology patents.
Or maybe even better Intel will get the patents. It will refuse to liscense them to anyone. Every other major chip vendor in the world will get together and create a pc based on a sane architecture. Linux will get ported over very quickly to the new improved architecture along with BSD, BeOs, and other alternatives. Windows being tied to the 80x86 architecture will take much longer to port. People seeing the vast improvements good hardware that is open standard can bring to desktop software will buy the new hardware and of course install linux, bsd,(insert operating system of choice) since windows is delayed for the next decade or so.
OK happy halloween. I was just kidding none of that will ever happen. Intel will probably get its patent and any other patent it wants, it will try to keep from liscensing it but will eventually give in because of the threat of monopoly charges.
----I promise never to write a responce drunk again I swear!!
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
Is it just me or do companies now days forget what got them where they are? Everywhere I look I see companies patent everything under the sun, and most of these companies were successful because because they were able to copy and improve in some way what someone else was doing. It just seems to me like they are biting themselves in the arse if an effort to play alone. Apparently they slept throught economics and the benefits of competition.
now when I write IA-64 assembly code, I can just look it up in the patent database. Soon the patent database will be the authorative resource for assembly programming!
PowerPC died at 4.0 and never actually made it to Apple hardware. Alpha is server-side only for the most part (though I'm sure NTW exists) and is basically circling the drain. Can't comment on MIPS or Clipper.
/Brian
No, it's not a perfect analogy, but it gets the point across. For every company that abuses the patent office, there is another that does not. Just because a system allows you to exploit it doesn't make it your obligation to do so, nor does it remove any moral obligations to behave responsibly. I don't agree. This smells like the tragedy of the commons. Either you "abuse" the patent office, or you don't. If you don't, somebody else will. You have to "abuse" just to survive. The way to fix this is not to ask "why can't we all just get along". The way to fix this is through legislation which forces the patent office to function properly. A no questions asked automatic death penalty for anyone who attempts to obfuscate an obvious idea would fix things pretty quickly.
Software patents delenda est.
I wanted to patent NOP
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Unfortunately, patent reviewers who don't grant patents aren't patent reviewers for long. Even if I was to become a patent reviewer, I would be out of there in a week.
They're all dead. Compaq and Microsoft jointly pulled the plug on win2000 development for the Alpha either earliedr this year or maybe last year, i forget when.
My NT Workstation CD does appear to have binaries for PPC, MIPS, Alpha, and x86. And NT wasn't ever promised for Apple hardware, it shipped for PReP machines, which was the long ago hope for a "standard" powerPC platform.
Some days it really pisses me off that there's no "misinformative" option in moderating.
If you are aware of such a treaty, feel free and provide such a citation. If you heard this from your mother's friend's sister's secretary, do a little fact-checking first.
There is a World Intellectual Property Organization which does accept patent applications. However, it does not grant worldwide patents. It merely expedites applying for patents in several countries (or regional organizations, see below), but it's still up to each individual country (or regional organization) whether or not to grant the patent.
There are three regional organizations I know of which grant patents which are applicable across multiple countries: the European Patent Office, the African Regional Industrial Property Organization (covering much of English-speaking Africa), and the Organisation Africaine de la Propriete Intellectuelle (covering much of French-speaking Africa). However, each of these organizations have their own offices for evaluating patents. So you can't just go to the Estonian Patent Office, have your application examined by them, and get a European patent. A European patent application is examined by EPO itself.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
The patent system is enshrined in the constitution, theoretically the highest law of the land. Anti-trust laws are not (unless you believe that that's "regulating interstate commerce"). So patents trump anti-trust.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
But the second half of my point is, those very companies abusing the patent office were the ones who pressured them to be more lenient. It's all in the interpretation, and I don't see how legislation would help, unless it did away with whole classes of patents entirely.
Not every commons is abused, not when people stand up to protect it. It is in their own best interests spend a little to organize a means of protection, even if free riders will benefit, rather than spend a lot to make up for its loss. The cheapest way is the traditional way, using non-coercive punishment, such as shame (generate bad PR for the offending company) and ostracism (refuse to do business with offending company). When people bend over and place all the blame on the patent office, they're shirking that duty to hold the those accountable who actually committed the offense.
All intellectual property is a commons. Sure, it is protected from exploitment by threat of violence, but the criteria where that becomes acceptable is open to change. We've let the biggest exploiters and parasites set the rules in their favor. The patent office is part of those rules, and are under their influence.
Sure, the patent office needs to be reformed. But that will never happen as long as everyone is an apoligist for those who put it in its current state.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
This article is sort of silly. "In effect, trying to patent the instruction set itself" is a fairly vague notion; in fact, what Intel is doing is patenting some of their software techniques (expressed usually in small groups of instructions) for prefetching and control/data speculation. Right or wrong, this happens all the time. If some company has a nifty new caching algorithm, they will patent the idea; not the gatelist and implementation.
For example, if you could implement a IA-64 clone by (say) ignoring all prefetch instructions, and just fetching the data when it was needed (effectively turning the chk instructions into the actual loads, for those who are aware of this stuff - you could do it with binary translation). While this may not be a very good idea, it wouldn't infringe their prefetching patent, even if you used the same instruction mnemonics and produced a chip that could run the same binaries.
Personally, I think these patent are potentially disturbing, but put it in perspective with common practice. Read the back of Microprocessor Report sometimes; there are lists upon lists of patents being granted for techniques in exactly the same fashion as above.
As for the patents, I haven't read them, but I suspect that they'll have a tough time with them. IA-64 didn't spring out of nowhere, and a lot of the ideas that went into it follow a fairly predictable (no pun intended) path of development in academia and industry. A fairly stacatto summary of these paths can be found at Historical background for HP/Intel EPIC and IA-64 - if you don't already know something about computer architecture, don't expect to be illumined. The point is, Intel (or more accurately Idea or whatever the Intel/HP collab. is called) hasn't necessarily added that much to prior art here, so the patent may be too broad and subject to either legal attack, or too narrow and easily worked around.
Oh, and to the people cheering on the failure of IA-64, I beg to differ. Some of us write compilers and binary optimizers and code generators, and the death of the x86 architecture would make us very, very happy. The fact that the first IA-64 is going to be a dog isn't really that suprising - it's a huge engineering task and the first chip was always going to be a reference chip more than a serious performance model.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people at M$ were actually looking foreward to seeing CmdrTaco(tm) running Outlook on Linux.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
If the patent office didn't pipeline the applications, could they possibly be any slower?
Oh, and the purpose behind those applications is to see if you can claim a patent on some inane obfuscation process to later sue IOCCC entrants, even if they're (probably) not writing in assembler.
later...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Patents have a finite lifetime, as do copyrights (though they keep getting extended). However there's no way that software can go into the public domain just because it is not patented - typically the lifetime for patents is much less than that for copyrights (e.g. 20 years vs 50).
Maybe this is just an obvious point, but isn't the whole patent system contradictory to anti-trust laws?
Patents the AND gate. Inudstry insiders speculate that Intel doesn't plan on licensing it, in an attempt to shut down the entire semiconductor world. Legal experts conclude that it is the fault of several major competitors, who have failed to jump in on the lucrative "logic gate patent and extort" field. Not to be outdone, anonymous AMD insiders claim they are preparing to patent NOT, for which they plan only to request reasonable license fees. Motorola spokesmen suggested in an our long press conference, that it is a lesser known fact, but that every other logic gate function is possible using only XOR. When asked about these bizarre business practices, USPTO representatives stated their resources and budget "only allow [them] to check through the last 100,000 patents or so" and in doing so they have saved the taxpayers nearly $250 this fiscal year.
Also in the news, AMD has registered a copyright on a software device called the "Naminator". Described as a program capable of coming up with the strange cpu names prefered by CEOs, some think it a move to deprive Intel of future names such as "celeon" or "itanium". One anonymous Intel marketing consultant said "Oh my god, we'll have to start naming them 'Rutabaga' or god forbid, the 'cantalop' !".
"The real problem is that alot of things that are being patented are things that if was ask by any decent programmer they would have came up with the same solution."
Let's change that to any decent system architect/systems designer (not really sure of the accurate terminology). Most of the 'decent' programmers couldn't/wouldn't write instruction set code. It is not easy. That and they can get paid more/enjoy their job writing C/C++/Java/VB/Applets/etc. I've only taken classes in this kind of thing and that convinced me that I didn't want to do it for a living.
Most of the above is opinion. Figure out which on your own.
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
In a brave move by processor company Intel, they have now copyrighted the process of moving bits and section of memory to registers where they can be modified/used. When other companies claimed "Prior Art!" Intel referred them to their 8086 processor line.
When asked why they weighted this long to file this copyright, they answered "Well, we got a few lawyers on lone from Rambus and Amazon so when they suggested it we said -- Why Not!"
It's obvious: by patenting the instruction set of IA64, Intel will prevent _any_ competition in that field. And in the hardware world, the best way to kill a system is to prevent the existence of clones (see IBM and PS/2 patents ==> no more PS/2). This is thus clearly a move from Intel to kill the IA64 platform before it only exists. Anyway, that's not so bad, since there are so many other good processor types (see ARM, for example).
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
I don't know about Windows or Linux, but like the MacOS I would imagine that the whole 32 bit address space is not available for use as RAM. In the MacOS Apple reserves the upper 3GB for devices like PCI, NuBus, PDS and AGP hardware. (Not all of these are in one chipset.) At any rate with a 32 bit address space you can't use all of this space for RAM, you need some of it for devices.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
"A method to obtain the number of elements of the union of two groups from the number of elements from each inicial group" (sum)
Not exactly. That would be the "inclusion-exclusion principle." The number of the elements in the union is not a strict sum. What would happen if you took the set of all Americans over 20 and the set of all Americans under 40 and tried to union them? They overlap, and if you simply add them, the answer is wrong because you count some people twice.
Blah, studying for my Discrete math exam...
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Well, the IA-64 is not only a messy instruction set to generate code for, and not only does its single existing implementation run like molasses, now other companies will also be prevented from coming up with compatible (and hopefully faster) implementations. I think the future of IA-64 is pretty uncertain...
At the present time, for home use, we've got home systems usually with 128Mb or 256Mb, and the 4Gb address space.
Many people are having problems hitting the 4Gb limit on servers and other high memory usage systems, I predict that bank switching solutions will again come in vogue for these applications, and within 5 to 7 years, the home user will have the same problems.
Evolution would be dumping the intel instruction set and architecture for superior technology. They're just patenting an implementation, which is ass silly, but not truly stiffling to the industry.
Eh...
Naturaly, the next tought that pops-up is: " Ooops ... There's a big bunch of treaties to make patents valid worldwide
That get's me worried!!!
When, and if, the problems with the U.S. patents office are sorted out, the problem will move elsewere - if patents are global in reach, companies will simply try to patent things (anything) in the places in which they are more likely to be granted so as to increase the number of worldwide patents they have. Competition between "patent heavens" (places were patents are easely granted), will drive restrictions on the granting of patents to zero.
I can just see the great patents of the future:
Excuse me, i have to go and throwup now ...
Microsoft loves the idea of having different platforms for their flagship products. So much so that when Compaq pull out of the Win2k Alpha race (they were paying for it!) Microsoft had a fit. After a few months Microsoft convinced Compaq to continue (money?).
Besides Microsoft has to change just a few things and then write a new HAL. Windows NT was even developed for a RISC chip initially (MIPS?) and was ported to x86.
Is this an attempt to block out even reasonable competition, or is this just "business as usual" as at least one voice in the story says?
Why can't it be both? Both an attempt to block out even reasonable competition and and business as usual.
I don't mean business as usual, in the Microsoft sense of being in the actual business of eliminating competition, but I mean "as usual" in a sense of this is the kind of thing that big corporations do?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
They did license their hardware out for a while. Then they decided it was a bad idea and pulled it. Happened early to mid 90's.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Isn't there any way to build something compatible with something else, and then actually say that it is compatible?
Is it a violation of trademark to say, "Compatible with MMX". And then in electron-microscope typeface say: "All trademarks are property of their respective owners."
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
"In doing so, the company appears to be, in effect, trying to patent the IA-64 instruction set itself."
:-)
Looks like AMD will have to just patent some 128 bit instruction sets to stay competitive!
Stop blaming the USPTO for everything. It is our problem, we are the cause, yes you and me. Listen very carefully, USPTO doesn't just provide patent for computer technology. The provide patents for every subject you can possible think of in this world. Awarding a patent to anything requires intimate knowledge with that field which enables you to know if the patent is legitimate or not. Therefore as you can see, for the patent office to honor only real and non stupid patents in the computer field. They need real computer professionals, people who intimately understand computers, follow the field, and keep in touch with it. Now back in the days, It was fun working in the patent office because you get to see so much "new?" things and such. But today, it all boils down to money. Will you give up your $90k job for $35k to work for USPTO? And how many slashdotters will do so? Thus as you can see, the problem is me and you. We are greedy, and this is just part of the things we get in return for our "greed."
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
They has a resonable time limit on patents 3-5 years seems to a decent limit. The real problem is that alot of things that are being patented are things that if was ask by any decent programmer they would have came up with the same solution. Well I guess the other /.ers are going to have with this one.
Well, this is sort of interesting. In a way, it will force motherboard and software manufacturers to build in more modular fassions, so that supporting different chips wont be so hard. What this means, is that hopefully new chips will be able to be more liberal in their design, hopefully speeding advancements. Other companies (hopefully) should forced not to copy intel, and to come up with some new stuff. Now, if mobo manufacturers dont start modularizing to be able to support different sorts of cpus, it may be hard to use non intel chips, even if they exist, because the other hardware that they would need to co-exist with wouldnt exist.
they're patenting it for ip protection. But, if they, for some stupid reason, decided to license those instructions out, imagine the royalties that could be collected. $.0001 every time you use that instruction! That would add up real quick. I wonder why Idea Corp. didn't patent it, cause otherwise, HP is getting screwed out of a patent they helped work on.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Will this be the end of or favourite architecture's hold on the market? Will it all end and a new standard come for everyone to shift to? I know a lot of people have been saying over the years that neither pc nor mac will ever be completely dominant. Has the time come for a new competitor?
They're a big corporation. They'd be stupid to do anything else. The real problem is with the USPTO.
As soon as anyone gets a patent they immediately receive a virtual monopoly on that product. It lasts for a lot longer than the product could practically be useful for. It needs to be sorted out, but by whom? The US Government ain't gonna do it. They need the corporate contributions.
After some serious analysis, I've come to the conclusion that "Anne Marie" is really just our beloved Signal 11 in drag. Allow me to share some of my findings:
/. all day long.
1. High user ID number. Her number is high enough to fall around the time Sig11 declared he was leaving Slashdot for good.
2. Blatant karma whoring Here is a perfect example
3. Unfunny posts moderated to +5 Funny. Honestly, I could never figure out how Signal 11 would be able to get a corny, painfully unfunny post modded so high. "Anne Marie" seems to have that uncanny knack as well. Try this one.
4. Knows Slashdot history very well. Here's proof. Clearly this person knows what Slashdot was like, and knows how to find old stuff. Signal 11 was always quick to point out how long he'd been around and seen things change.
5. Posts early and posts a lot. Ever take a look at Signal 11's posting history when he was in full force? You'd see something like this. Nobody but Siggy 11 could have that much free time to be posting, and posting early enough to get the moderation points. He confessed at one time that his job was so boring he had the time to be posting to
If that is not enough proof for you, I don't know what else there could be. My conclusion is that Signal 11 has taken on the role of "Anne Marie" as another experiment. Do you all remember his karma experiment? Well now he has decided to try life on Slashdot as a "woman". I urge you all to stop helping Signal 11 make Slashdot his personal playground.
This patenting of specific functions smacks of Microsoft tactics, but oh well. This might have worked back with the 16 and 32 bit processors, but since AMD is developing a completely different architecture, the big competition is still going to be there.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
Hello?!? Alpha? SPARC?
Yes, this might be an assembly/C/C++ programmers nightmare, but isn't that why programmers are always learning new things?
Can you explain what you mean here? I don't follow.
FYI, the bigcharts.com site contains an abbreviated version of the original article from EE Times. It's got a little more technical detail in it.
...would be:
an attempt to block out even reasonable competition, therefore just "business as usual"
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
I'm a biassed AMD fan, but in a way, I dont see what the fuss is, beacuse its not like AMD or IBM (or any of the other x86 CPU manufacturers) should be copying Intel's instructions anyway. If so, why so? Like Fleetwood Mac said..."you can go your own way."
I like that idea.
...such as myself, USPTO is an acronym for
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
The clone makers were not expanding the overall Mac market, just cutting into Apple's own share of the market. In that sense cutting them off made sense as Apple could make more money with a 100% market share than a non-100% share of a not necessarily larger market. Competition which would also have required additional marketing costs, cutting further into profits.
BountyQuest is a Web site that rewards people $10,000 and up for information that challenges patents. Rea d more on this.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
the real issue is _which_ instruction set will gain favor with developers. Will it be the (lame, IMHO) Intel Itanium, or AMD's better Hammer architecture?
Maybe the real issue is, which instruction set will gain favor with customers. I've been around the block enough times now to see that technical superiority means absolutely nothing as to whether something will gain favor in the marketplace. Let's see... MS-DOS/p-System, VHS/Beta, 8088/68000, IBM-PC/Macintosh, USB/Firewire, MS Windows/(insert any other OS here), etc.
[Aside: the original IBM PC was offered with two operating systems: MS-DOS and the p-System. The p-System was superior in many ways.]
As to whether it will be the Intel Itanium, or AMD's Hammer architecture, maybe it could be both? Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to have this kind of standardization? Maybe we could have standard memory, busses, card slots, usb, and other interfaces to ensure component interchangability, but maybe we no longer need to standardize on a particular instruction set? Wouldn't this free up resources to do real innovation, rather than expending effort to come up with innovative ways to make the ancient 8088 instruction set faster? After all, all modern OSes are architecture neutral. Apple developers have now been shipping "fat binaries" (i.e. compiled for two different architectures) for years. [This naturally begs the issue of doing the final code generation on the target OS.]
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
As a point of comparison: if you scan in a 300-year-old painting, you can copyright your digital version, because you had to use creative judgement to adjust the contrast/brightness, etc.
It seems to me that deciding exactly which instructions to include in a chip's instruction set involves much more creativity than scanning in a picture. So shouldn't it also be copyrightable?
So why hasn't Intel done this? Anti-trust issues? Does anyone know?
Haven't you heard? Old standards never die, they just get extended, extended, and extended some more until you can hardly recognize them.... and they're a real mess. :)
:-)
You forgot about the embrace part that happens prior to the extending, which then leads to the real mess.
You have forgotten something. -- Ambassador Kosh Naranek
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Let's try and get this patent pushed through as quickly as possibly
Why?
Because at the rate Intel is going, it will expire before working chipw actually hits the market
BTW, How long have SGI and Sun been using 64bit Risc?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
What I don't understand was at some point it wasn't legal to patent ISA's. See IBM versus Amdahl as the example. I thought this got litigated on during the 70's and IBM lost? But then, you would think patenting algorithms, i.e. natural laws was illegal. Guess that's changed somewhere along the line.
Pitty!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Microsoft is already commited to producing a Windows 64 for IA-64. They seem to like the idea just fine. Intel is very dependant on Microsoft by the oppiste is also true. Microsoft needs intel to push its chips faster to encourge people to upgrade (there by re-buying windows). If we were still at 400 MHz would anyone have a new computer? And besides Intel still owns 80%-85% of the entire chip market, everyone else is just small fries.
Some experts "wonder" whether Intel...
Not that I'm saying that it isn't possible that Intel is doing this, but the fact that they suddenly submitted a bunch of patents hardly constitutes evidence. Not to mention the fact that the reporter hasn't even gotten anyone to go on the record to claim authorship of this pondering. So basically its all just suppositions. Certainly always possible, and knowing computer corp. strategies even likely, but shoddy journalism is still shoddy journalism.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
- Merced/Itanium has been delayed countless times.
- Performance predictions (at least for the first generation or IA64) have been scaled back to the point that it appears that IA32 will be more performant in the same timespace
- AMD is going forward with their own 64 bit chip, the sledgehammer. This has the advantage that it will (probably) have a much smaller die and use much less radical design techniques.
- IA64 is so tied to compiler technology (that isn't good enough right now) that performance will be a huge problem at least for the near future.
- IA64 is, in general, in a state of massive hemmorhaging. (as with most of Intel's near future plans, but that's another story)
Given all of this, I'm inclined to believe that their patents (which I'm sure they will get..."Bring it on Intel"
-Chris
Seriously, I can see Intel using its war chest of cash, helped by MSFT, to take down competitors. And get stupid judges who don't know tech to rule a cease-and-desist action for the non-licensed competitors.
...
Just think, elect Bush and it will all get even worse
As some others have said "It's the Patent Office, Stupid!" - we need to get reasonable limits on patents, a more open search for prior research and work, and more true peer review. And then we need to work on that silly copyright extension as well.
Will in Seattle
I could be way off on this, but apple really screwed themselves out of market share by not licensing their product out so that clones could be made. What exactly does intel hope to accomplish by this?
I am not too sharp on patent law or coding for that matter, but by patenting the instructions themselves would code writers actually have to pay intel if they wrote code that accessed system level operations?
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
I don't really mind Intel doing that. I also don't think Intel will actually enforce such a patent:
They're reliant on Microsoft to stay in business. While people don't really have a choice about Microsoft (don't. You know, and I know, that there are always better options to Microsoft, but do you expect Joe Idiot to install Linux?), they do have a choice about Intel. As more and more people are shying away from Intel in favour of IDT WinChip, Cyrix, AMD, and other giants, Intel would only shoot itself in the foot by enforcing such a move.
Microsoft would not be very friendly to having to write new versions of all their operating systems, each coded to a different architechture. They aren't very happy with having an Alpha and an x86 version of Windows NT. How do you think they'll react to an Intel, and x86, AND an Alpha version of Whistler?
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Sure, people have been using phone numbers for similar effects for a long time, but this particular number has always been mine.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
These patents are not "inventions" in the conventional sense. These are functions that are inevitably going to be discovered. It is comparable to someone trying to patent the plus operator or the minus operator when they were discovered. These patents are not an assembly of discoveries (such as math or engineering) to create a tool (such the vacuum) they are simply discoveries. They will be taught in school one day. I find it hard to disgusting that a company will go so far as to say an idea is their own property. It is a bane on humankind and holds back progress.
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
is an attempt by Intel to get some leverage over Transmeta (or anyone else) incase they want to simulate the instructions in software.
Transmeta's Code Morphing technology is designed to emulate CISC architectures. Itanium is a VLIW (explicitly scheduled RISC) machine.
I'm sure Intel would love to get their hands on some of Transmeta's patents.
Transmeta's most obvious patent that I can see is a "commit/rollback" structure for registers. However, prior art for this dates all the way back to the Z80 processor, which had two parallel sets of registers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
They've tried to get out of that rut several times
in the past. Chips since the Pentium essential
emulate x86 on a RISCish substrate. Emulation
will continue as long as the software is around.
Business-as-usual, trying to block out even reasonable competition. Sounds like Intel to me...