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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.
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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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.
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.
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.
If Intel was picking on little guys, maybe they'd curl up in the corner. Hard to see it in this case.
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. :)
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"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
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.
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?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
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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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
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.
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.
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.