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

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.

Comments

SSE is still patented

[tepples]

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.

Re:SSE is still patented

[Rockoon]

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.

The x86 did not power the first IBM PC

[MeNeXT]

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.

Re:The x86 did not power the first IBM PC

[Major Blud]

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/...

Translation:

[GameboyRMH]

"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!"

Re:Intel DOES have a leg to stand on

[pem]

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.