Ignoring the US Copyright vs Canadian law question, wouldn't the US be one of the big copyright violators themselves. Perhaps they should put themselves on the list.
Actually, most of the performance benefit presumably comes from the fact that most ARM cores use virtually indexed caches, which uses the virtual address instead of the physical address to do cache lookups (thus bypassing the TLB altogether in most cases). As a result, on a context switch, you need to flush the cache as well as the TLB. There are extra facilities available that allow for the segregation of multiple addresses spaces, but they impose restrictions on the process address space and/or the number of processes. If you can live with those restrictions (or if you are willing to make major changes to the Linux kernel) you can avoid the cache flushes and hence get massive context switch speedups.
I think most people are forgetting that RIM had already lost the initial
lawsuit, and that the verdict is binding, irrespective of whether the patents
at the heart of the case are eventually overturned. So, they had to pay
NTP something (minimum, the 54 million awarded). Plus, since they continued
selling the blackberry after the verdict, they likely would have had to
pay back-royalties as well, again, even if the patents were eventually
overturned. So, they were never going to get out of the mess without
paying something; it just was just a case of how much.
Slashdot Mirror
Ignoring the US Copyright vs Canadian law question, wouldn't the US be one of the big copyright violators themselves. Perhaps they should put themselves on the list.
Actually, most of the performance benefit presumably comes from the fact that most ARM cores use virtually indexed caches, which uses the virtual address instead of the physical address to do cache lookups (thus bypassing the TLB altogether in most cases). As a result, on a context switch, you need to flush the cache as well as the TLB. There are extra facilities available that allow for the segregation of multiple addresses spaces, but they impose restrictions on the process address space and/or the number of processes. If you can live with those restrictions (or if you are willing to make major changes to the Linux kernel) you can avoid the cache flushes and hence get massive context switch speedups.
I think most people are forgetting that RIM had already lost the initial lawsuit, and that the verdict is binding, irrespective of whether the patents at the heart of the case are eventually overturned. So, they had to pay NTP something (minimum, the 54 million awarded). Plus, since they continued selling the blackberry after the verdict, they likely would have had to pay back-royalties as well, again, even if the patents were eventually overturned. So, they were never going to get out of the mess without paying something; it just was just a case of how much.