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Intel: Steer Clear Of Our Patents (axios.com)

Posted by msmash on from the making-clear dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Intel posted a long blog post yesterday touting the success and evolution of its 40-year-old x86 microprocessor -- the one that powered the first IBM personal computer in 1978 and still powers the majority of PCs and laptops. But it wasn't just a stroll down memory lane. Intel ended the post with a reminder that it won't tolerate infringement on its portfolio of patents, including those surrounding x86. The company wrote, "Intel invests enormous resources to advance its dynamic x86 ISA, and therefore Intel must protect these investments with a strong patent portfolio and other intellectual property rights. [...] Intel carefully protects its x86 innovations, and we do not widely license others to use them. Over the past 30 years, Intel has vigilantly enforced its intellectual property rights against infringement by third-party microprocessors. [...] Only time will tell if new attempts to emulate Intel's x86 ISA will meet a different fate. Intel welcomes lawful competition, and we are confident that Intel's microprocessors, which have been specifically optimized to implement Intel's x86 ISA for almost four decades, will deliver amazing experiences, consistency across applications, and a full breadth of consumer offerings, full manageability and IT integration for the enterprise. However, we do not welcome unlawful infringement of our patents, and we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel's intellectual property rights. Also read: Intel Fires Warning Shot At Qualcomm and Microsoft Over Windows 10 ARM Emulation.

87 comments

  1. Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Intel's patents... such as the AMD-64 instruction set, which is present in all of Intel's microprocessors, and is patented by ... uh oh.

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    1. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by NixieBunny · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Intel and AMD have had some cross licensing arrangement from the late seventies, which I'm sure we are not able to view. But patents on a 40 year old architecture might be a wee bit expired by now.

      --
      The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
    2. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by tepples · · Score: 1

      i686 and x86-64 are not "a 40-year-old architecture".

    3. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, if YOU had come up with AMD64, Intel would have hauled your ass to court, much as they did with AMD last century. AMD and Intel ended up with a cross license agreement, which Intel was able to use to make use of the AMD64 instructions, and, importantly, which AMD was able to use to create them in the first place.

      You could argue that some or all of these patents wouldn't be valid in court. I would definitely argue that they SHOULDN'T be valid, given the things that they patent. But regardless of that, the threat of legal action that will cost millions, inject risk into the market price, and potentially be a loss of billions is enough give most companies pause.

      There's no way to make a chip that emulates x86 without getting hauled off to court by Intel. Whether you win or lose is another matter.

    4. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Their cross-licensing agreement allowed Intel to use AM64 instructions, and AMD to use 32-bit x86 instructions. The 70s arrangement just involved the 80286, IIRC

    5. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by unixisc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Intel never hauled AMD to court for AM64. At the time, Intel was hoping to break clean of x86 by introducing the Itanium, while AMD took the tack of extending the x86 instruction set to 64-bit, something that Intel desperately wanted to avoid. In short, Intel tried to shut AMD out of the market the innovative, rather than the legal way: it just happened that VLIW, or EPIC, was such a bust that even Linux hated it, while AMD scored a coup in the market.

      After that, Intel tried coming up w/ their own 64-bit extension to the x86, but Microsoft, which by then had already sunk effort into making 64-bit versions of Windows XP based on AMD, made it clear to Intel that they were not gonna support 2 different x86 instruction sets. This was similar to what Microsoft had done in the past, when they forced AMD, Cyrix, Centaur and Winchip to agree on multimedia extensions. Once Intel got this message, they realized that the only clean way of doing this was doing a cross licensing agreement w/ AMD. There are a couple of instructions in the Intel-64 instruction set that are a tad different from AMD64, but otherwise, they are identical.

      At any rate, the biggest thing Intel demonstrated was that having sheer expertise at fabs and manufacturing capacity beat the crap out of any inherent architectural superiority any competitor might have: that's how they felled every RISC rival that they had. Like the Alpha & the PA-RISC was way superior to them, but once they could pack 2 or more cores in a package, along w/ the Windows NT kernel being the unified basis of all Windows OSs, it was easy to catch up w/ them from a stance of price points. Intel doesn't have to sue anybody to preserve x86: worst case, they could simply start manufacturing Snapdragons or A10s or whatever, and horn in on the action

    6. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, but the former is over 20 years old.

    7. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Intel never hauled AMD to court for AM64

      Not claimed in post. Post said, if YOU did it. Basically, anyone but AMD.

      Because Intel DID haul AMD to court about x86 stuff.
      http://old.seattletimes.com/ht...

      AMD has always had some type of agreement to point to or buttress. If they didn't, and they made AMD64, Intel would have been up their butt way harder.

      The rest of your post is pretty spot-on though. But no one else could have innovated the way AMD did with AMD64, because no one else was sitting on a cross license agreement and a bunch of legal precedent- or at least, not without very costly legal battles.

    8. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      And so, going down the same rabbit hole, for every claim on an unexpired patent, there'll be a work-around. Instead of fighting all of this, Intel could just take ARM licensing and make their own silicon and oh yeah, have to deal with competition.

      If Microsoft can turn 180 in a decade on Linux, Intel can turn in five years to ARM. The Atom family has been cute, but does Intel have even a tiny fraction of the smartphone and tablet market? So how did that work for ya, Intel? Hmmmm?

      I personally think that processor emulation is a recipe for disaster, but these days, but a few people even understand RISC vs CISC arguments.... they understand instead, battery life and perceived application performance and don't give a whit if Intel is inside, or AMD, or Snapdragon, etc. Let them beat the lawyer drums, the last sound made from a dying innovator.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    9. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      I yield to no man in my ignorance of IP law, but I'm pretty sure you can't patent an instruction set. You can patent the implementation hardware, or at least a lot of it, but I doubt that restricts emulation. And I'm pretty sure that you can copyright microcode. Patents are only 20 years BTW. OTOH, copyrights last for all eternity (OK, OK ... maybe only a century or two).

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    10. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      IIRC, Intel-AMD cross licensing dates back to the 1980s when major PC makers insisted that there be a second source for Intel CPUs. Otherwise they would design their hardware around a competitor's (e.g. Motorola) chips.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    11. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by tepples · · Score: 1

      The former also got SSE2 grafted onto it, which is newer than 20 years old and on which Windows 8.1 and 10 depend. Besides, application publishers are dropping support for the former.

    12. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by BozoForPresident · · Score: 1

      CoreBoot opensource bios would very much like to steer clear of this particular bit of Intel technology - https://puri.sm/posts/how-puri... How Purism Avoids Critical Intel Security Exploit

    13. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

      Intel invests enormous resources to advance its dynamic x86 ISA

      Looks like that got typo'd. Should have read:

      Intel invests enormous resources to protect its cash cow x86

    14. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Intel did have battles w/ AMD in the past over x86, whenever AMD tried making 386s, 486s & the like. At that time, the CPUs that AMD made were similar to Intel's, but slower. The first time AMD tried anything new was when they acquired NexGen, but they were still way behind Intel in that they lacked an FPU. It was only after Dirk Meyer's Alpha team from DEC joined them that AMD really had a quality product in the Athlon, and on that one, Intel didn't sue them.

      I also disagree about your second point: if any other company, say Cyrix, had simply taken the Intel x86 instruction set and made a 64-bit extention like AMD did, sans any 32-bit support, Intel wouldn't (and couldn't) have done a thing about that: it had nothing to do w/ any cross licensing, which even AMD didn't have before AMD64. The only reason Intel played ball w/ AMD at all was Microsoft, and that incident made it clear for the first time that if there was a fight b/w Intel & Microsoft, the latter would win. I doubt that that's so much the case today, since Microsoft is greatly diminished after the Windows 8 & 10 fiascos, while Intel is still #1 when it comes to fab technology alone - even if they lost the x86 completely. They could just sign a contract w/ Apple or Qualcomm and start churning out phone chipsets by the lot. Since both Apple & Qualcomm happen to be fabless.

      At any rate, if anybody makes an x64 CPU w/o supporting any x32 mode, all they'd need would be an agreement w/ AMD, but not Intel. In the past, CPUs absolutely had to support x32. But it's fast getting to the point where they don't have to, and once that happens, it won't be an Intel game any longer. Of course, since everybody's doing far better w/ the ARM, I can't see them bothering. But a design that has 2 cores - 1 ARM, and 1 x64 - would be able to run either binary natively. Like if it had Windows 10 Mobile on it, but needed to run a PC app, that app, once recognized, could be sent by the scheduler to the x64 CPU.

    15. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Well, Intel had the StrongARM processor, which they got from DEC, rebranded as XScale, and then later sold to Marvell. Like you say, there's nothing to stop them from licensing it from ARM. Heck, since Apple & Qualcomm are both fabless, they can cut deals w/ them to put them on their 14nm process and give them some of the best performing energy saving silicon.

      The argument here is not RISC vs CISC, and hasn't been for 2 decades. The problem is a simple running code written in the instruction set of processor X on processor Y. Y has to understand what the code written in X is saying, which is where emulation/translation comes in. I agree that it's a recipe for disaster: just look at DEC Alpha, which never caught on since native code was never written for it in NT.

      I'd think that AMD would be the best positioned to make a CPU ideal for this: have a quad core CPU, where 2 cores are AMD64 and 2 cores are their ARM64. Have Microsoft tool their OS such that any wintel binaries get set to the x64, while the ARM native OS itself, or other native ARM apps run on the ARM. They can then avoid the emulation issue, and if a CPU is being under-utilized, they can switch to power saving modes for those cores.

    16. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I doubt it, since in those days, AMD had a tough time selling its CPUs anywhere. Same was true for Cyrix. It was only after Athlon that AMD started gaining traction. Also, that agreement probably didn't cover 32-bit CPUs, which is why Intel sued AMD over Am386s and Am486s.

    17. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      You're thinking 2000. The original cross licensing was around 1980 when Intel was a much less dominant company and failure was still a (remote) possibility. I don't recall the full details of why the cross licensing was continued into the 21st century. Antitrust concerns and customer pressure? By "customer" I mean the likes of Dell and Compaq, not consumers. No one cared much about consumers back then any more than they do today.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    18. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      No one's analyzed the emulator code to my knowledge, to understand if it's indeed an x64/AMD instruction set.... but we know that there is a 32-bit variant, and so, whose x86 is it, anyway?

      How one arrives at an instruction execution matters very much in terms of predictability, state machine, even mundane stuff like bus timings and core cohesiveness/thread control/state.

      I don't think Microsoft will be the litigant... and I believe Intel will try to cow its OEMs. And I believe they'll fail, having held so many of them hostage for so long. They used to be part of the gravy train, but now they're part of the fief.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    19. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by Agripa · · Score: 1

      MIPS used patents to discourage clones of its processors.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    20. Re:Like the AMD-64 instruction set? by Agripa · · Score: 1

      There has been some activity on the front in the past with MIPS and the patents they used to prevent clones.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  2. 16 years... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The patents on x86 have surely expired by now.

  3. Careful not to poke Microsoft by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, get into a fight with MS - "I don't know why Windows performs so poorly on your newest, highest-margin chip. Maybe because we had to disable certain compiler options that infringed on your patents. Everything works full-speed on the AMD chips, though. Weird."

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    1. Re:Careful not to poke Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The reason we will not see patent reform is that situations like you describe don't normally happen.

      Big companies like MS and Intel can do patent licensing exchanges that cover both parties.

      It's the little guys, who don't have the patent portfolio or deep pockets to go to war with, that get stomped on like bugs by the big players and preyed on by the trolls.

    2. Re:Careful not to poke Microsoft by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Reason we won't see patent reform is that the topic is way too complicated for even swamp bureaucrats on K Street or Foggy Bottom, let alone DC politicians. So their recourse would be to turn to the experts, which would be the industry leaders - who became leaders due to their expertise. As a result, those big guns are the ones who'll keep calling the shots, so the laws would be written in a way to favor them at the expense of any upstarts.

  4. The Java Trap by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Then I guess we can now consider the x86 and x86-64 instruction sets subject to what Richard Stallman has referred to as the Java Trap. A free program with proprietary dependencies is trapped, and Intel is asserting that the x86 and x86-64 instruction sets are proprietary.

  5. Open standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the x86 ISA has been around for so long, and so widely used, it should be an open standard available for anyone to implement in any way they wish. Shove your patents up your bumhole.

  6. Speak softly and carry a big stick... by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

    I assume if someone's loudly proclaiming they'll totally come at you with their super huge big spiked stick, that they in fact have a very tiny, limp noodle.*

    Are intel's patents and legal team so pathetic that they need to resort to twitter-level insults?

    (* penis penis peeeennniiisss)

    1. Re:Speak softly and carry a big stick... by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Honestly, that makes some sense. He proved that empty chest pounding buffoonery online has no real negative consequences even in terms of foreign relations. Clearly no one is going to buy AMD simply because Intel made a dumb bluff.

  7. SSE is still patented by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Patents last 20 years after filing.* Most x86 programs nowadays rely on "i686" instructions introduced with the Pentium Pro (1995) and Pentium II (1997), whose patents have presumably expired just recently, and the Pentium III (1999), whose patents still subsist. Furthermore, many application developers have stopped building for i686 protected mode in favor of the newer x86-64 long mode.

    * A few U.S. patents filed before mid-1995 and granted after mid-2000 still subsist because they're grandfathered into the pre-1995 rules.

    1. Re:SSE is still patented by pem · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Summary makes it sound like patents are about instruction set emulation, not about the instruction set. Intel has a lot of those.

    2. Re:SSE is still patented by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Most x86 programs nowadays rely on "i686" instructions introduced with the Pentium Pro (1995) and Pentium II (1997)

      Bullshit. Very few new instructions and not all that useful of ones came out with those CPU's.. and that remained true until SSE2.. not even MMX was useful enough for "most" programs use.

      The x86 instruction set minus the SIMD stuff was pretty well fleshed out when the 386 hit, which is a couple generations and a full decade BEFORE the cpu's you are talking about.

      Probably the most important single instruction added to the x86/x64 legacy in the past 10 years is POPCNT, which isnt Intels either.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    3. Re:SSE is still patented by unixisc · · Score: 2

      Have MMX or SSE been relevant at all, ever since the advent of GPUs?

    4. Re:SSE is still patented by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Informative

      SSE2 and later is very relevant. Not so much regular SSE (1)

      SSE essentially doubled the number of registers, and although none of the new registers are fully general purpose thats a huge win. The SIMD portion not so much (its a rare programmer that will use the SIMD extensions of their compiler,) and it didnt help that Intel screwed up their SSE SIMD adding all these "horizontal" operations that defeat the entire advantage of SIMD if you use them.

      Those horizontal operations are convenient, but if you are doing high performance SIMD then the data within one of your wide registers is all going to be exactly the same kind and isnt very suitable for any sort of horizontal operations. A registers of high performance SSE SIMD contains X3:X2:X1:X0 (all the same component of a 4 different vectors), not W0:Z0:Y0:X0 (a complete 4-component vector.) The terminology in the SIMD world for these two views of the registers are Structure of Arrays (SoA) and Array of Structures (AoS).

      There isnt a single GPU that offers horizontal operations in its instruction set like Intel gave to SSE, because it defeats the purpose and would destroy the performance.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    5. Re:SSE is still patented by yuhong · · Score: 1

      The patents are probably almost expiring by now though. Remember the priority dates of Pentium 4 SSE2 patents released in Nov 2000 are probably around 1999 at the latest for example. SSE1 itself is just a subset of SSE2 with only single precision floating point instructions BTW. That itself was released with Pentium III in Jan 1999, meaning the priority date can't be later than 1998.

    6. Re:SSE is still patented by Agripa · · Score: 1

      The minimum these days is SSE2 and what the Pentium 4 supported. I find many applications and libraries which require SSE2 whether they should need it or not.

  8. Software patents aren't what they used to be by pem · · Score: 3, Insightful
    And the Eastern District of Texas isn't what it used to be, either.

    If Intel was picking on little guys, maybe they'd curl up in the corner. Hard to see it in this case.

  9. Honey Badger by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    >> we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel's intellectual property rights

    China don't care. Neither do consumers, for that matter. Given the length of court cases, if I was an Intel competitor I'd be awfully tempted to do what many startups do: steal everything and hope the resulting lawsuit harmlessly drags out until after you've cashed out. With that in mind...what's the point of posting your legal policy in some summer intern's blog? (If I was Intel, I'd be working with my PR department to get stories about how Intel squashed this and that company out into the tech press, maybe even mainstream TV, instead.)

    1. Re:Honey Badger by Killall+-9+Bash · · Score: 1

      I would care if Intel hadn't been resting on its laurels for the past 15 years or so.... not to mention charging premium prices for marginal upgrades. The only difference between Intel and a patent troll is a few billion dollars of outsourced R&D (which hasn't been very productive lately).

      --
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    2. Re:Honey Badger by Agripa · · Score: 1

      China cared in the past. Why would this be any different?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  10. Déjà vu by zoid.com · · Score: 1

    Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, Slashdot this morning.....
    https://games.slashdot.org/sto...

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    Zoid.com
  11. Missing closing quote by 31415926535897 · · Score: 1

    warning: missing terminating " character
    error: missing terminating " character
    error: expected primary-expression before 'return'

    Editors--that makes it hard to read, because I can't trust when Intel's quote ends so I don't know if it's Intel speaking or editorializing for any given sentence.

  12. The x86 did not power the first IBM PC by MeNeXT · · Score: 1, Informative

    The first IBM PC was release in 1981 with an 8088 processor and optional 8087 math co-processor. While I may be wrong on the date, I am sure of the CPU because I have one of the original system right here.

    --
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    1. Re:The x86 did not power the first IBM PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you're right on the date, too. I remember looking at them in the IBM store in Philadelphia when I was in grad school, and that was after 1981.

    2. Re:The x86 did not power the first IBM PC by alexhs · · Score: 2

      The 8088 is an x86 CPU, released in 1979. It's an 8086 (released in 1978) with an halved data bus (8-bit instead of 16-bit). Or maybe were you thinking of the IA-32, introduced with the 80386?

      --
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    3. Re:The x86 did not power the first IBM PC by Major+Blud · · Score: 5, Informative

      The first IBM PC was release in 1981 with an 8088 processor and optional 8087 math co-processor. While I may be wrong on the date, I am sure of the CPU because I have one of the original system right here.

      It's semantics really. The 8088 was a cheaper version of the 8086.....it used the 16-bit x86 instruction set, but the less expensive 8-bit data bus.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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  13. Cease and Desist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I hold the patent for duping articles on the front page

  14. I like where this is going. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What this really shows is that Intel is incredibly insecure because they are highly vulnerable. Intel doesn't really have a leg to stand on regarding patents for x86 so they are just lashing out and hoping to scare off people. They are reverting to their anti-competitive nature because they are now losing on both in the server market (due to AMD's Zen arch) and if Microsoft doesn't blow it, the commodity Desktop market could go to ARM. Intel has really earned this fate and I know they will break the law repeatedly to avoid it. They are getting their just deserts. :)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:I like where this is going. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ARM doesn't want to or need to have to go into the desktop market. They are happy with the mobile and server markets. As their GPU's and CPU's get faster, more types of new work can be moved to and/or done on mobile systems. Engineers no longer have to shuttle between a workstation room and the assembly workshop. They can take a tablet with them and have the data streamed from the cloud and viewed locally. They won't stop using workstations, but it reduces the time that they are used. It is a worry if a company is hotdesking, since fewer workstations are needed.

    2. Re:I like where this is going. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What this really shows is that Intel is incredibly insecure because they are highly vulnerable.

      Intel's fab costs per product are probably rising at a terrifying speed if they can't get maximum volumes. ARM licensees and other fabless companies are able to spread the load with the rest of the industry.

    3. Re:I like where this is going. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Intel is insecure then I want to be insecure. They're the best chip maker on the planet and are a full 2 generations ahead of their nearest competitor technology wise. Zen is nice, but the reality is it's pretty much only on par with Intel parts from 2010. AMD is pushign Intel prices down (Which is good) but Intel isn't losing shit when it comes to market share.

      This is just an extension of patent fights with Qualcomm - That is Qualcomm is doing everything in their power to stop Intel from getting in to the cellular modem chip biz. Intel of course is going to make noise when Qualcomm talks about making inroads in the windows space.

      If anyone's not got their head on right here it's Microsoft. I don't know why microsoft keeps throwing their hat in with Qualcomm in their mobile efforts. (Every Microsoft phone or tablet explicitly and only runs on Qualcomm SoCs. It's literally required.)

      Qualcomm's chips suck and they're getting worse. Apple, Samsung, and almost every major Chinese phone maker all have their own custom fabbed SoC products. Microsoft should look in to fabricating their own SoCs if they really want to make an impact.

    4. Re:I like where this is going. by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      Zen is nice, but the reality is it's pretty much only on par with Intel parts from 2010.

      lol

    5. Re:I like where this is going. by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Intel's fab costs per product are probably rising at a terrifying speed if they can't get maximum volumes. ARM licensees and other fabless companies are able to spread the load with the rest of the industry.

      That is true on the manufacturing side but the various ARM licensees also duplicate development so it is not Intel facing off against the ARM juggernaut; instead it is the Intel ox facing a flock of ARM chickens which duplicates the situation when Intel was facing off against the various RISC workstation and server processors except back then, development costs were lower for RISC developers which is not the case for ARM designs if they want to compete with Intel.

      On the manufacturing side itself, Intel has a dedicated high performance logic process while the fabless ARM companies have to compromise with processes intended for low power computing unless they share with GPUs.

  15. Isn't emulation technically legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really, isn't it legal to "emulate" the programming of something? Which would be why Nintendo can't do crap against all the console emulators out there?

    1. Re: Isn't emulation technically legal? by Voyager529 · · Score: 2

      Game console emulation is a quagmire unto itself.

      NES/SNES emulation is "legal" in that you're hard pressed to find a for-profit company coding and selling one, so the most they could do is send a C&D order to Sourceforge or Github to kill the downloads - trying to file a lawsuit against an OSS developer would be pretty fruitless. Nintendo is far more apt to go after ROM hosting sites.
      PSX emulation (and many after) rely on a BIOS file that's copyrighted. Emulators can exist, but they're useless without the BIOS. Still later console generations rely on the DMCA to make them de facto illegal, and that's full circle on the latest console generations since they're all x86 anyway.

    2. Re: Isn't emulation technically legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also of note: Nintendo doesn't have the patents on the 65c02 (NES) or the 5A22 or 65c816 (SNES) or the R4300 (N64) or the PowerPC 4xx (Gamecube) or 750 (Wii) or presumably any of the rest of their hardware components that are being emulated. They only hold the patents on the assembly of those components. They also have (or had) patents on things like the 10NES lockout chip, but issues with bypassing that got settled in the Tengen lawsuit long ago.

      This lack of holding the patents on any of the major hardware components is what prevents them from suing emulator authors. The emulators authors are simply emulating those hardware components. And, abstractly, they're emulating the assembly too, but it's a different implementation by definition (emulated rather than the original hardware), so it already doesn't violate the hardware patent.

  16. Dupe by chuckugly · · Score: 2

    Beau, meet Mish, MIsh, Beau https://games.slashdot.org/sto...

  17. Translation: by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Informative

    "The market for new CPUs hasn't been so hot in the last few years, ARM processors are becoming more and more popular, and AMD is starting to bring stiff competition again, so we're going to become patent trolls now to make up for all that lost income. So beware!"

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    1. Re:Translation: by CajunArson · · Score: 0

      Funny how AMD is getting credit around here since they actually sued multiple mobile graphics companies for patent infringement this year: http://www.anandtech.com/show/...

      Incidentally, those companies are in absolutely no way trying to make "Radeon knockoff" parts that copy AMD's actual products. Hell, they aren't even competing in the same markets where AMD sells products since AMD ain't selling smartphone chips.

      But AMD sued anyway and not a peep from the "OMG patent troll!" crowd.

      The difference is that Intel is trying to prevent direct knockoffs of its own products here. Intel isn't running around suing anybody who makes an ARM chip for use with standard ARM software, it's (legitimately) trying to stop direct knockoffs that are basically reimplementing x86 architecture. If you want to whine about how that's "unfair" try making an ARM knockoff chip without paying up and see how far you get.

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    2. Re:Translation: by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      I'm not an AMD fanboy either, so you can take your strawman elsewhere. I didn't give AMD credit for anything other than the release of competitive chips (after many years of not being so competitive).

      Looks like Intel is specifically worried about ARMs eating desktop market share:

      https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    3. Re:Translation: by NewGnu · · Score: 1

      The patents are expired and the 32 to 64 bit move is a trivial and obvious move to anyone in the industry you fucking retard. The courts don't enforce patent law except against those without the patent tho: they just rubber stamp everything... or they did. Till perhaps now after the SC ruling.

  18. Obligatory:Intel CPU Backdoor Report (May 5 2017) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The goal of this report is to make the existence of Intel CPU backdoors a common knowledge and provide information on backdoor removal.

    What we know about Intel CPU backdoors so far:

    TL;DR version

    Your Intel CPU and Chipset is running a backdoor as we speak.

    The backdoor hardware is inside the CPU/Bridge and the backdoor firmware (Intel Management Engine) is in the chipset flash memory.

    30C3 Intel ME live hack:
    [Video] 30C3: Persistent, Stealthy, Remote-controlled Dedicated Hardware Malware
    @21:43, keystrokes leaked from Intel ME above the OS, wireshark failed to detect packets.

    [Quotes] Vortrag:
    "the ME provides a perfect environment for undetectable sensitive data leakage on behalf of the attacker".

    "We can permanently monitor the keyboard buffer on both operating system targets."

    Backdoor removal:
    The backdoor firmware can be removed by following this guide using the me_cleaner script.
    Removal requires a Raspberry Pi (with GPIO pins) and a SOIC clip.

    Decoding Intel backdoors:
    The situation is out of control and the Libreboot/Coreboot community is looking for BIOS/Firmware experts to help with the Intel ME decoding effort.

    If you are skilled in these areas, download Intel ME firmwares from this collection and have a go at them, beware Intel is using a lot of counter measures to prevent their backdoors from being decoded (explained below).

    Useful links:
    The Intel ME subsystem can take over your machine, can't be audited
    REcon 2014 - Intel Management Engine Secrets
    Untrusting the CPU (33c3)
    Towards (reasonably) trustworthy x86 laptops
    30C3 To Protect And Infect - The militarization of the Internet
    30c3: To Protect And Infect Part 2 - Mass Surveillance Tools & Software

    1. Introduction, what is Intel ME

    Short version, from Intel staff:

    Re: What Intel CPUs lack Intel ME secondary processor?
    Amy_Intel Feb 8, 2016 9:27 AM

    The Management Engine (ME) is an isolated and protected coprocessor, embedded as a non-optional part in all current Intel chipsets, I even checked with the engineering department and they confirmed it.

    Long version:

    ME: Management Engine

    The Intel Management Engine (ME) is a separate computing environment physically located in the MCH chip or PCH chip replacing ICH.

    The ME consists of an individual processor core, code and data caches, a timer, and a secure internal bus to which additional devices are connected, including a cryptography engine, internal ROM and RAM, memory controllers, and a direct memory access (DMA) engine to access the host operating system's memory as well as to reserve a region of protected external memory to supplement the ME's limited internal RAM. The ME also has network access with its own MAC address through the Intel Gigabit Ethernet Controller integrated in the southbridge (ICH or

  19. Intel STOLE every available RISC patent tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Intel was the ultimate example of CISC in motion with the 486 and original Pentium. And this work was mostly Intel's own since the IBM/Microsoft contract for the early PC had allowed Microsoft to see off the vastly surperior 16-bit competition like Motorola.

    But then Microsoft hit a brick wall- the end of CISC usefulness according to the tenants of computer science. And everyone else and their dog was un to their necks in RISC research.

    Intel's answer was to wholesale STEAL all available RISC tech for the Pentium Pro (the consummer version of which was the Pentium 2) and trust that the monopoly profits pouring in from the growing PC market would pay for future legal issues. And Intel was right- down the road Intel was successfully sued for billions, but laughed off the fines as 'chump change' (and even bought out DEC since it was cheaper than paying DEC the fines owed).

    Intel's so-called patents today are simply other people's work repackaged in the patent troll legalise- or else plainly obvious non-innovations. It is telling, for instance, that Intel outspends AND thousands-to-one in R+D, yet in one leap AMD has passed Intel in power efficiency, and matched Intel in IPC (excluding the pointless AVX2). Intel only has a single-threaded lead because it currently hits more than 1GHz higher than AMD.

    So why does Intel lie about its 'patent' portfolio? Because like Apple, Intel is in a brand game where most people bu Intel under the misunderstanding that the brand leader is inherently 'better'. So Intel uses PR FUD to continue convincing the poorly informed that this is 'true'.

    1. Re:Intel STOLE every available RISC patent tech by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Was that what the DEC lawsuit against Intel over the Alpha was? Intel stealing DEC techniques and implementing them in the Pentium IV?

    2. Re:Intel STOLE every available RISC patent tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Intel bought out DEC? Wow! I must have missed that. It was Compaq that bought out DEC and then HP bought the DEC/Compaq/Tandem company.
      HP took over and laid off my department. I started with DEC in 1978.

      DEC and Intel came to a settlement on the patent case.

  20. Intel vs...... the world? by zarmanto · · Score: 1

    I'm having difficulty seeing exactly how Microsoft's emulation of the x86 instruction set on a competing platform is really any different from the various other emulation efforts -- and sometimes outright copies -- in both past and present products. (Such as AMD chipsets, SoftPC/SoftWindows/RealPC, Virtual PC... and that's just off the top of my head.) I mean, other than the notion that most past emulation efforts weren't really a threat, whereas this is the biggest gorilla in the jungle shifting all of their efforts over to a competitor, which might conceivably cause Intel to go bankrupt. Yeah... no real difference except that, of course.

    1. Re:Intel vs...... the world? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Virtual PC

      Oh you mean Microsoft own product?

  21. All car has always a backdoor, the 3rd or 5th door by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How old are their hidden backdoors?

    20-years later (2017), another company can fabricate "i686-clone" (1995's) without these "backdoors" at speed of 5GHz!

  22. Dupe much? by hackel · · Score: 1

    BeauHD literally just posted this story this morning.
    https://games.slashdot.org/sto...

  23. Intel DOES have a leg to stand on by williamyf · · Score: 1

    First the usual IANAL.

    But I am an electornics engineer (but not in Utah).

    If you recall, Microsoft and Qualcom are using emulation to run 32bit apps. Therefore IA-32.

    IA-32 is firmly intel patented. These patents are licensed to AMD under a variety of agreements, on in particular in 2001. The other side of the coin is that Intel Licenses a big chunck of AMD's AMD-64 ISA, which is not emulated by Microsoft-Qualcom.

    Therefore, any claim over the use of IA-32 has to be done by intel (AMD would be more than happy to license the AMD-64 ISA for the right amount of cash).

    As stated by others, in the USoA, patents only last 17 years, but remember that over the last few years we have seen, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AVX, AVX2, virtualization support, etc. Many of those instructions exist in 32 bit SW as well. And are still covered by patents by intel. Not emulating those leads to iffy app support under emulation, so your emulation has to work "around" the patents. OR, you go to court and try to invalidate them...

    So, there is a strong possibility that intel has grounds for a claim. Whether they have *enough* ground, that's a differnt story...

    Of course, Microsoft and Qualcom are no pushovers whatsoever, so, it would be nice to watch a fight between those three...

    But do not just assume that Intel's threat is a tiger paper...

       

    --
    *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    1. Re:Intel DOES have a leg to stand on by pem · · Score: 3, Informative
      Engineer who purports to know about patents doesn't know that all patents filed in the last 22 years expire 20 years after filing, not 17 years after issue.

      Apparently also hasn't been following Supreme Court patent jurisprudence. If Microsoft is emulating these instructions with software and a general purpose computer, there is a good chance that Microsoft's actions will be found non-infringing.

      It may be a closer call if instructions were added to make the emulation easier, though.

    2. Re:Intel DOES have a leg to stand on by mysidia · · Score: 2

      IA-32 is firmly intel patented.

      The IA-32 chip designs -- the way instructions get implemented on a chip are the Intel patent.

      What you cannot patent, or what can be challenged - is the particular user interface.

      For example, you cannot patent the notion of "ADD Instruction" with such and such hex code, that takes 3 registers as input, that is written like this [example example example]; the invention would be a specific machine implementation or specific logic circuit which processes this instruction.

      So the ability to patent your IA-32 chip design does not mean you can exclude someone else from independently designing a chip of their own which provides the same use interface and accomplishes the same computation (Using a different novel circuit design), and does not give a leg to stand on against emulators, either.

    3. Re:Intel DOES have a leg to stand on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For Intel, pretending that patents over an ISA would cover emulators is crazy.

      CPU patents are usually about the implementation of mechanisms, not simply the instruction set. There were famous MIPS patents about instructions allowing misaligned accesses, but these patents could not prevent full software emulation.

      Besides, QEMU supports the emulation of x86_64 instructions on all supported platforms (which includes ARM). Intel never complained. It would be difficult now to forbid Microsoft to do the same thing as what QEMU and other emulators such as BOCHS have been doing for years.

      FUD campain.

  24. what is a set of instructions? by porky_pig_jr · · Score: 2

    One may argue that at this point it is a simply of specification of interface interpreted by microcode, and interface is not covered by IP, at least every USA court of law rejected any such case. In case of instruction set what matters is its implementation on a microcode level, and of course Qualcomm would implemented it in a way completely independent from the way Intel does. IMHO, Intel would have a hard time proving it otherwise.

  25. That dripping sound you hear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is Intel swirling around the drain.

  26. Re:Obligatory:Intel CPU Backdoor Report (May 5 201 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop spamming this copy paste bullshit on every article asshole!

  27. Translation by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 1

    "Our company now employs more attorneys than engineers. Our product pipeline is pretty much tapped out. We got nothin'."

  28. Dont patents only last 20 years? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why should I steer clear of their 40 year old patent again?

  29. shut your dick licker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you triggered n_i_g_g_e_r loving fagot face snowflake

  30. Network effect by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Patent protection for x86 ISA show how the patent system is broken. x86 ISA is not innovative nowadays, and the number of transistors required to decode x86 instructions makes x86 ISA a technical liability

    The real value of x86 ISA is compatibility, with a lot of programs built for it. That means patent here protect a network effect and not innovation.

  31. Everyone is already staying away from Intel by iamacat · · Score: 1

    Every new product has been using ARM, which offers convinient licensing not only of ABI but actual silicon designs. They still have server market, but ARM will pop up there too as soon as they are dumb enough to jack up prices. New performance war is anyway in GPUs and now TPUs. Don't care, LOL, bye!

  32. 1978: They got it wrong. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The linked-to article was mistaken. (The Intel blog was not.) 1978 is when the CPU was released. The IBM PC didn't come out until '81.

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