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Everyone else (ARM etc.) has a monopoly on the ISA or they don't even publish it (NVIDIA etc.) Intel actually makes perhaps the most open commercially significa

by _yosefk 11y ago

Everyone else (ARM etc.) has a monopoly on the ISA or they don't even publish it (NVIDIA etc.) Intel actually makes perhaps the most open commercially significant platform.

makomk 11y ago
Not really. Unlike Intel, ARM licenses their ISA to anyone who's willing to pay. Every single modern iPhone has an entirely in-house Apple implementation of the ARM ISA and they're definitely not the only ones
nickpsecurity 11y ago
That's far from true. We've been able to license ARM and MIPS ISA's plus implementations for a long time. They and Intel defend theirs with patents. SPARC, the most open of old ones, could be used without license fees or patent risk at all. You just had to make it ISA compatible then pay a $99 fee. Gaisler has a SPARC CPU and pile of SOC HW under GPL that ASIC proven even on radhard, space applications. Enterprise versions selling for a premium exist from Oracle and Fujitsu. I'd say Intel is not that open at all given the secrets remaining, patent protections, and lack of competition. POWER is slightly more open with PowerPC embedded implementations. ARM and MIPS are more open since they actively license implementations. The most open is SPARC ISA hands down given every aspect is usable with source available for several CPU's.
- tw04 11y ago
  POWER is FAR more open than Intel. You can actively license it just the same as ARM (not to say the licensing terms are the same, but the concept is). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    I put it between Intel and ARM because I still didnt know what I got at what price after reading OpenPOWER website. I have that data for ARM, MIPS, and SPARC. So, what's an OpenPOWER license cost, the royalties if any, and does that come with ASIC-ready implementation?
- _yosefk 11y ago
  Well, currently shipped SPARC's volumes are relatively low AFAIK, and ARM and MIPS (now IMG) are in fact monopolies, they just happen to license the ISA & the implementation because they choose to do this. Intel does not choose to let AMD and VIA ship x86 CPUs and in this sense it's less of a monopoly. Of course you could argue that ARM is more open than x86 in some other significant sense; here I think that the PC is a more open platform than perhaps any widely shipped ARM-based system, in terms of the variety of available operating systems and software and the ease of developing such software, especially if said software is to have reasonably wide applicability and long shelf life, and also in terms of the degree of control that any single entity has over the platform. In general I think that the "vertical disintegration" where you have fabs which are open to everyone making chips integrating cheap IPs, instead of companies with their own fabs, has destroyed "openness" - it used to be the case that you knew exactly what the hardware was doing, and it is now the case that you need to sign a draconian NDA to program most of the components in most chips, and this option is only available to select "partners." x86 is an older product and hence more open than most successful newer products; it was perhaps less open than its competitors at the time, which in part explains why it was more successful than those competitors... (A closed platform is a kind of a high-risk, high-reward game.)
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    OK. Well, we have to consider that. There's companies making money on the ISA's and implementations. Intel's main business is the ISA and implementation of x86. By that standard, they have quite a huge chunk of a oligiopoly with only 1 real competitor and a niche competitor in low-power space. For ARM, there are at least 10 companies that fully licensed and extended the I.P. plus academics doing their own. Additionally, Intel and AMD extend their own stuff in their semi-custom business whereas I can extend ARM or MIPS myself after licensing it. The PC builds on blackboxes from Intel and AMD plus a few others that differentiate at the board level. Barely a comparison to ARM, MIPS, etc differentiating at SOC and transistor level. So, Intel is dominant in their ISA, its implementation, and in a profitable way. ARM and MIPS don't come close despite their monopolies on the ISA's themselves. "x86 is an older product and hence more open than most successful newer products; it was perhaps less open than its competitors at the time, which in part explains why it was more successful than those competitors... " This is news to me. Far as I knew, it dominated desktop due to backward compatibility and other strategies. It wasn't open in many ways. SPARC and PPC even adopted OpenFirmware while Intel still had closed microcode updates. It's still the least open ISA of the high-sellers. "In general I think that the "vertical disintegration" where you have fabs which are open to everyone making chips integrating cheap IPs, instead of companies with their own fabs, has destroyed "openness" - it used to be the case that you knew exactly what the hardware was doing, and it is now the case that you need to sign a draconian NDA to program most of the components in most chips" That I agree with. Fortunately, there's work from companies and academics to change that with actual silicon being prototyped. This will be an uphill battle but is becoming feasible. The main drawback is that the cost of EDA and prototyping means closed I.P. might stay the norm. Only exception is if we can get academics to put key I.P. in public domain as they develop stuff. PCI or USB here, analog stuff there at 45-90nm at least. Make it cheaper.

by _yosefk 11y ago

Everyone else (ARM etc.) has a monopoly on the ISA or they don't even publish it (NVIDIA etc.) Intel actually makes perhaps the most open commercially significant platform.

makomk 11y ago

Not really. Unlike Intel, ARM licenses their ISA to anyone who's willing to pay. Every single modern iPhone has an entirely in-house Apple implementation of the ARM ISA and they're definitely not the only ones

nickpsecurity 11y ago

That's far from true. We've been able to license ARM and MIPS ISA's plus implementations for a long time. They and Intel defend theirs with patents. SPARC, the most open of old ones, could be used without license fees or patent risk at all. You just had to make it ISA compatible then pay a $99 fee. Gaisler has a SPARC CPU and pile of SOC HW under GPL that ASIC proven even on radhard, space applications. Enterprise versions selling for a premium exist from Oracle and Fujitsu. I'd say Intel is not that open at all given the secrets remaining, patent protections, and lack of competition. POWER is slightly more open with PowerPC embedded implementations. ARM and MIPS are more open since they actively license implementations. The most open is SPARC ISA hands down given every aspect is usable with source available for several CPU's.

tw04 11y ago
POWER is FAR more open than Intel. You can actively license it just the same as ARM (not to say the licensing terms are the same, but the concept is). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  I put it between Intel and ARM because I still didnt know what I got at what price after reading OpenPOWER website. I have that data for ARM, MIPS, and SPARC. So, what's an OpenPOWER license cost, the royalties if any, and does that come with ASIC-ready implementation?
_yosefk 11y ago
Well, currently shipped SPARC's volumes are relatively low AFAIK, and ARM and MIPS (now IMG) are in fact monopolies, they just happen to license the ISA & the implementation because they choose to do this. Intel does not choose to let AMD and VIA ship x86 CPUs and in this sense it's less of a monopoly. Of course you could argue that ARM is more open than x86 in some other significant sense; here I think that the PC is a more open platform than perhaps any widely shipped ARM-based system, in terms of the variety of available operating systems and software and the ease of developing such software, especially if said software is to have reasonably wide applicability and long shelf life, and also in terms of the degree of control that any single entity has over the platform. In general I think that the "vertical disintegration" where you have fabs which are open to everyone making chips integrating cheap IPs, instead of companies with their own fabs, has destroyed "openness" - it used to be the case that you knew exactly what the hardware was doing, and it is now the case that you need to sign a draconian NDA to program most of the components in most chips, and this option is only available to select "partners." x86 is an older product and hence more open than most successful newer products; it was perhaps less open than its competitors at the time, which in part explains why it was more successful than those competitors... (A closed platform is a kind of a high-risk, high-reward game.)
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  OK. Well, we have to consider that. There's companies making money on the ISA's and implementations. Intel's main business is the ISA and implementation of x86. By that standard, they have quite a huge chunk of a oligiopoly with only 1 real competitor and a niche competitor in low-power space. For ARM, there are at least 10 companies that fully licensed and extended the I.P. plus academics doing their own. Additionally, Intel and AMD extend their own stuff in their semi-custom business whereas I can extend ARM or MIPS myself after licensing it. The PC builds on blackboxes from Intel and AMD plus a few others that differentiate at the board level. Barely a comparison to ARM, MIPS, etc differentiating at SOC and transistor level. So, Intel is dominant in their ISA, its implementation, and in a profitable way. ARM and MIPS don't come close despite their monopolies on the ISA's themselves. "x86 is an older product and hence more open than most successful newer products; it was perhaps less open than its competitors at the time, which in part explains why it was more successful than those competitors... " This is news to me. Far as I knew, it dominated desktop due to backward compatibility and other strategies. It wasn't open in many ways. SPARC and PPC even adopted OpenFirmware while Intel still had closed microcode updates. It's still the least open ISA of the high-sellers. "In general I think that the "vertical disintegration" where you have fabs which are open to everyone making chips integrating cheap IPs, instead of companies with their own fabs, has destroyed "openness" - it used to be the case that you knew exactly what the hardware was doing, and it is now the case that you need to sign a draconian NDA to program most of the components in most chips" That I agree with. Fortunately, there's work from companies and academics to change that with actual silicon being prototyped. This will be an uphill battle but is becoming feasible. The main drawback is that the cost of EDA and prototyping means closed I.P. might stay the norm. Only exception is if we can get academics to put key I.P. in public domain as they develop stuff. PCI or USB here, analog stuff there at 45-90nm at least. Make it cheaper.