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Intel Potentially Reverse-Engineered AMD64
icypyr0 writes "Tom Halfhill, an analyst for In-Stat/MDR claims that due to similiarities in the instruction sets of AMD64 chips and the new 64-bit extensions for Intel Xeons, it is clear that Intel reverse-engineered the AMD64. However, due to the fact that the new Xeon is not an exact copy of the AMD64's microarchitecture, Intel has not broken the law. This very tactic has actually been used by firms such as AMD in the past to catch up to Intel."
AMD will have the last laugh here. Turns out they embedded a Pink Floyd album in the code of AMD64 (a fair-use copy, as AMD had previously purchased the album). When Intel copied the code and put it in their chip, it was all AMD needed for a little call to the RIAA to pay a visit to Intel's house....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Intel employee A: Here's the spec AMD gives us. Use it.
Intel employee B: Yee Hah!! I've almost figured out how they do this last opcode!
Intel employee A: Yeah, it's on page 183 of this. Read it.
Intel employee B: Leave me alone!! Specifications are for weenies! I'll reverse engineer it. You can keep the specs, thanks.
I think we're supposed to be amazed that a big company did something that isn't illegal. Not sure though, that's the best I could get out of it.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
Next week: GNU/Assembler. . .
You are not the customer.
Does that mean that what each AMD64 machine instruction does is not fully specified? How are we supposed to program for the AMD64 then, by using only the machine instructions that are clearly explained? Intel just missed an opportunity to invent a new behavior for the badly-explained instructions, publish a "complete instruction set handbook" for the AMD64, which people will use because AMD's handbook is unclear/incomplete, and have everyone wonder why their "AMD64" code only works on Intel.
You must be new here.
You must not know how to read slashdot ID #'s.
Hollywood actor Ben Affleck has been witnessed cashing a multi million dollar paycheck around the time of the chip's release. Film at 11.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
> In Slashdot Utopia we could mark this article as "-1, Yellow Journalism".
Has anyone submitted a patch to slash for story moderation? At least then the editors can't claim the code isn't there...
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
if only AMD had been able to sneak in a few cyrix chips as their new easier-to-reverse-engineer edition 64bit chips....
Gee, can I do this with music, and then the RIAA can't touch me?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"OpenBSD developers was not very happy with the Intel decision..." Both of them? :)
Everyone knows how slashdot ID #'s work.
In a now famous episode of short sightedness, CmdrTaco said, "Slashdot will never need more than 640K IDs," and determined that slashdot IDs would count down from 640K and stop when they hit 0.
Your ID of 15628 indicates both that you are new here, and that the end is near.
Whatever you say, newbie.
I've been waiting for that....:-)
Dammit! I told you not to let the workers have any chains!
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