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Intel Threatens To Revoke AMD's x86 License
theraindog writes "AMD's former manufacturing division opened for business last week as GlobalFoundries, but the spin-off may run afoul of AMD's 2001 cross-licensing agreement with Intel. Indeed, Intel has formally accused AMD of violating the agreement, and threatened to terminate the company's licenses in 60 days if a resolution is not found. Intel contends that GlobalFoundries is not a subsidiary of AMD, and thus is not covered by the licensing agreement. AMD has fired back, insisting that it has done nothing wrong, and that Intel's threat constitutes a violation of the deal. At stake is not only AMD's ability to build processors that use Intel's x86 technology, but also Intel's ability to use AMD's x86-64 tech in its CPUs."
Maybe I'm missing something, but how can the x86 architecture itself be subject to copyright? Isn't the protected property not the publicly documented instruction set, but the implementation thereof?
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I for one, will miss the Megahertz Myth race.. But hey, it might go crazy when AMD has a GPU as the Vector CPU in the computer, and Intel has to sell a 63-bit processor.
I guess it will be exciting to watch new developments again.. Seems they've gotten a little to comfortable with each others positions lately..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Long live StrongSparcPC_x64! Poor Microsoft, how on earth would they sell Windows 7?
But the big draw of windows is the inertia of 1,000,000 one-off apps that businesses have written. Microsoft would be scared of people moving to another architecture just because if people were making a (painful) switch anyway, they might look at the alternatives.
-Bucky
Something like that, but not perfectly symmetrically. While x86_64 is well-enough established that it would be inconvenient for Intel to have to go back to x86 and build a new, non-derivative extension with similar capabilities, it would be less of a problem for them than AMD losing the rights to use x86-anything.
Given that Intel and AMD don't have serious competition for desktop PCs right now, its possible that the a result that hurts Intel a lot but AMD more in the short term could benefit Intel in the long term, though really the intent here is almost certainly to get concessions from AMD on the basis that Intel may be able to prevail in court, and AMD stands to lose more if the agreement is terminated; it is extremely unlikely that Intel's goal is to terminate the agreement.
Not trying to sound like a troll here, but x86 should have been retired decades ago. It designed in a totally different era and was never intended to scale well and its been a series of hacks to get it to do so. ( it was impossible to predict where we were going back then, the cpu industry was far too immature )
Sure, they have done wonders keeping it moving, but its long since time to start over with a clean architecture.
My preference would be MIPS or SPARC inspired, but thats just me, either way its time to move on/up.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Funny that you should say that, because if the world ends at the infinite loop, we'll all be running Mac OS X.
Hmm, I wonder if the reason for this is Intel is scared of Globalfoundaries? If I'm not mistaken, the folks who bought the foundry from AMD are the same folks who are building in Dubai. You know the place where money flows like water and they're willing to waste billions to build custom islands? If that's the case, it is possible that AMD could be ramping up their production and process dramatically which would negate any gains Intel has. AMD also seems to have a more market friendly history with other companies than Intel has. Perhaps this is Intel's attempt to gain a monopoly before their ship sinks?
This is probably just high stakes gambling. AMD has little to lose. (I say that as an AMD share holder looking at my $2.49 stock price.) Intel has more to lose if they have to redo the 64Bit code. According to the reading, if Intel wins, they get rid of AMD, and become a defacto monopoly having to face US and EU anti-trust regulators. If AMD wins, they get to go along as before and Intel can't sell 64-bit CPUs that people want.
Basically I bet AMD's lawyers are saying "Go ahead make my day." Given the above even if Intel wins in court, they lose.
Think Deeply.
There's a lot at stake.
It appears from the snippet of Intel-AMD agreement posted that I've seen (at Tech Report, in comments) that The Foundry Company is perfectly fine under the agreement, as AMD has a certain share of the company, and it formed from AMD's assets.
So Intel might be playing with fire. They lose this, they've just lost x86-64 - and Itanium is dead due to minimal investment in the past 5 years, and this year is when 64-bit x86 will hit the common desktop with Windows 7. More likely that AMD would get that license really loosened if they won and a bunch of money, but you know, if they're backed by ballsy Arabs...
If AMD lose, Intel could have all sorts of fun.
I'd like to see this go a bit father.
Today's chips, at their core, look a lot like RISC chips. They do a lot of work to hide that, translating x86 ops to native ops. I'd like to see a chip that can run in a x86 'translated' mode and a 'native' RISC mode, much like was done with 32bit/64 bit.
this is, admittedly, a much harder task to accomplish, but exposing a more efficient RISC mode would drive OS vendors to migrate to that. With a bit of careful juggling and VM technology the chips would allow legacy code to run while exposing the more efficient native modes to software that took advantage of it.
Such a shift would take time, but so is 64bit.
Oh well, I guess I'll go back to the idea lab and keep on dreaming.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
It wasn't so much that Intel couldn't keep up with demand, more that IBM's policy required that a second source be available just in case they couldn't.
No, there is no law against being a monopoly. There are laws against being an abusive monopoly however. Intel has been convicted of abusing it's monopoly status in Japan, has at least been accused of doing so in the EU. Maybe AMD could file a complaint in the USA also and have it successfully investigated. Once convicted of being an abusive monopoly the rules change.
In theory the UK monarch can veto any law parliament puts before him or her. In practice, vetoing rarely happens as it can lead to the removal of the monarchs head. Intel should be careful just how far they push this as states could just decide they are abusing their position and remove their right to x86 all together.
That's not true. Windows NT has run on Mips, i860, Alpha, PPC and Itanium. None of them ever had even 1% of the market.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The ARM netbooks and embedded devices are coming and there's nothing Microsoft or Intel can do about it except adapt and compete. The time when you could defeat a good technology with an evangelist is long gone since the public now knows evangelists are just shills for hire. The day a MS rep could derail a Linux deployment with a sneer has passed. Sorry Enderle, your day is done.
Intel will choose to compete and they have a good start because they started years ago. As the Atom die shrinks and gains SOC capabilities, its power requirements will come down. Maybe not to ARM levels, but to an acceptable level faster than ARM can bring their performance up to acceptable levels for a good user experience. Microsoft will choose to use the tools they have, and fail to adapt. That's what they do. They can't grasp a market that's abandoned the need for them. It's alien to their corporate culture. After they've failed in the market they'll buy an ARM OS vendor and try, but that's five years hence. and they'll buy five of them badly and integrate them poorly and we'll laugh at their ineptitude here.
Ultimately Intel will win this one but there will be some interesting side stories and products between now and then. Microsoft will lose because they choose not to port to the interesting new platform Linux runs on already, and so when the channels merge again they will have lost share. By then low power devices might be most of the share, at least for end user devices.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Intel can shut down AMD's ability to use the X86 technology without giving up the AMD-64 technology if they can show that AMD defaulted on the agreement.
AMD can use the X86 technology and prevent Intel from using the AMD-64 technology if they prevail.
A court is going to have to measure this. The smart money is on a settlement but barring that Intel will win.
Let us meet here again in seven years, when the matter is settled.
Help stamp out iliturcy.