8 ms·

Attorneys on both sides must be excited on some level about the potential number of billable hours it'd take to litigate a case like this. Reminds me of a some

Attorneys on both sides must be excited on some level about the potential number of billable hours it'd take to litigate a case like this. Reminds me of a something an entrepreneurship professor told me... If there's one lawyer in town, they drive a Chevrolet. If there are two lawyers in town, they both drive Cadillacs.

blazespin 9y ago
To be fair Intel has done a lot of work to make the x86 as great as possible. Patent lawsuits are awful. I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either. My guess is this is all just negotiation from Microsoft's point of view and they are just trying to get Intel to license the ability to emulate x86. Another possibility is this is a way to get Intel to invest more resources ( even at a loss) into competing with ARM.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  I don't see why Intel would ever do that, for any amount of money that Microsoft would conceivably pay.
  - blazespin 9y ago
    Well there are so many boundary conditions here . As noted below it's possible that Microsoft could emulate only older technology that isn't covered by patent. Or emulate x86 technology which has weak patent protection and then use some of their own patents to sue Intel into agreeing to license. There are so many strategies and tactics and Battle maneuvers here that it's difficult to say in just one simple hacker news posting what's going to happen.
- emmab 9y ago
  > I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either. And yet vendor-lockin is not good for competition. Is the increased incentive for research investment due to patents worth more to humanity than the resulting vendor-lockin that makes it harder to switch to AMD?
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Emulation is only an implementation of the ISA. The x86 ISA is hardly "as great as possible". In fact, it's downright crummy: x86-64 is as bloated as RISC architectures usually are without any of RISC's benefits. At best you can make the argument that x86 has done well in spite of the ISA, not because of it. The silicon-level implementation is another matter entirely, of course--but emulation has nothing to do with that. In fact, that's the definition of emulation--using a completely different implementation to offer a compatible interface.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    x86-64 is a perfectly acceptable ISA. Strong memory ordering, no architectural optimizations leaking out like branch delay slots or stack windows. Pretty good i-cache efficiency through the use of two-address code and memory operands. Of course, Intel didn't have much to do with it. Most of it is either an accident of history or the work of AMD, who a lot of work regularizing the ISA in the 64-bit transition.
    - cwyers 9y ago
      Microsoft isn't emulating x86-64, so far this is 32-bit only.
    - pcwalton 9y ago
      1. Yeah, ARM has one nasty architectural optimization leaking out: the program counter register being 8 bytes ahead of where it should be due to pipelining. Thankfully that got fixed up in AArch64, and if 32-bit mode gets dropped down the line (which is allowed by the architecture) it'll be a thing of the past. x86 has some architectural leaks too, though: the aliasing of the MMX and FP stacks as a hack for compatibility with early versions of Windows comes to mind. This one hasn't been fixed. 2. The REX prefixes are a nightmare: most instructions have one and this tremendously bloats up the instruction stream size. For this reason, the i-cache efficiency is not good compared to actual compressed instruction sets such as Thumb-2 (not that Thumb-2 is wonderful either). Note that if you do extreme hand-optimization of binary size, you can get x86-64 down pretty far, but so few people do that that it doesn't matter in practice. 3. Two address code isn't necessarily a win, especially since it doubles the number of REX prefixes. In AArch64 "and x9,x10,x11" is 4 bytes; in x86-64 "mov r9,r10; and r9,r11" is 6 bytes (and clobbers the condition codes). There's a reason compilers love to emit the three-address LEA... 4. Memory operands are nice, though I think the squeeze on instruction space makes them not worth it in practice. I'd rather use that opcode space for more registers. 5. Immediate encoding on x86-64 is crazy inefficient. "mov rax,1" is a whopping 7 bytes.
- geon 9y ago
  > Intel has done a lot of work > copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee You are contradicting yourself. Intel built an instruction set for hardware. Emulating it on an ARM would completely negate the usefulness of it. There is no copying, since the emulator is built on software. The patents concern hardware design, not software. The whole case should be laughable. It shouldn't even be thinkable to take something like this to court. But I'm sure some layers are going to make a lot of money.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    No. If they're anything like the Itanium ISA patents, then Intel owns the rights to the instructions themselves and their meanings. Emulation would be infringing.
    - ue_ 9y ago
      I'm a little ignorant on this, but how can you own the rights to instructions? Isn't that the same as owning the rights to an API, or the naming and operation of functions? I mean, would I be infringing if I re-implemented the C standard library, or the standard library of some language with a copyrighted spec? How can you even patent something like that? It goes beyond software patents, as it appears to me. But again, I'm very ignorant of this.
      - dboreham 9y ago
        We're not talking here about what is right, or even what is correct under the law. We're talking about what a set of lawyers think they can plausibly use to bring an infringement case and not be laughed out of court. A broad spectrum of possibilities.
        benchaney 9y ago
        Actually this sub thread is about what is right. > To be fair Intel has done a lot of work to make the x86 as great as possible. Patent lawsuits are awful. I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
KevinIsMyName 9y ago
I assume lawyers on both sides have already hands full of work. I imagine these huge corporations spend lots of money on legal.
- bfe 9y ago
  http://x-r.ai/ http://x-r.ai/ is working on a patent attorney AI to automate a lot of patent attorney work to resolve patent disputes more quickly and cheaply.
  - chris_wot 9y ago
    Hope they don't violate any patents in this process.
    - killin_dan 9y ago
      On the other hand, maybe they could violate them left and right and let the code sort it out.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Is there a version that works? Really interested in trying it.
    - bfe 9y ago
      you can sign up for updates at http://x-r.ai http://x-r.ai & be notified when it launches. thanks.

blazespin 9y ago

To be fair Intel has done a lot of work to make the x86 as great as possible. Patent lawsuits are awful. I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either. My guess is this is all just negotiation from Microsoft's point of view and they are just trying to get Intel to license the ability to emulate x86. Another possibility is this is a way to get Intel to invest more resources ( even at a loss) into competing with ARM.

throwaway2048 9y ago
I don't see why Intel would ever do that, for any amount of money that Microsoft would conceivably pay.
- blazespin 9y ago
  Well there are so many boundary conditions here . As noted below it's possible that Microsoft could emulate only older technology that isn't covered by patent. Or emulate x86 technology which has weak patent protection and then use some of their own patents to sue Intel into agreeing to license. There are so many strategies and tactics and Battle maneuvers here that it's difficult to say in just one simple hacker news posting what's going to happen.
emmab 9y ago
> I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either. And yet vendor-lockin is not good for competition. Is the increased incentive for research investment due to patents worth more to humanity than the resulting vendor-lockin that makes it harder to switch to AMD?
pcwalton 9y ago
Emulation is only an implementation of the ISA. The x86 ISA is hardly "as great as possible". In fact, it's downright crummy: x86-64 is as bloated as RISC architectures usually are without any of RISC's benefits. At best you can make the argument that x86 has done well in spite of the ISA, not because of it. The silicon-level implementation is another matter entirely, of course--but emulation has nothing to do with that. In fact, that's the definition of emulation--using a completely different implementation to offer a compatible interface.
- rayiner 9y ago
  x86-64 is a perfectly acceptable ISA. Strong memory ordering, no architectural optimizations leaking out like branch delay slots or stack windows. Pretty good i-cache efficiency through the use of two-address code and memory operands. Of course, Intel didn't have much to do with it. Most of it is either an accident of history or the work of AMD, who a lot of work regularizing the ISA in the 64-bit transition.
  - cwyers 9y ago
    Microsoft isn't emulating x86-64, so far this is 32-bit only.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    1. Yeah, ARM has one nasty architectural optimization leaking out: the program counter register being 8 bytes ahead of where it should be due to pipelining. Thankfully that got fixed up in AArch64, and if 32-bit mode gets dropped down the line (which is allowed by the architecture) it'll be a thing of the past. x86 has some architectural leaks too, though: the aliasing of the MMX and FP stacks as a hack for compatibility with early versions of Windows comes to mind. This one hasn't been fixed. 2. The REX prefixes are a nightmare: most instructions have one and this tremendously bloats up the instruction stream size. For this reason, the i-cache efficiency is not good compared to actual compressed instruction sets such as Thumb-2 (not that Thumb-2 is wonderful either). Note that if you do extreme hand-optimization of binary size, you can get x86-64 down pretty far, but so few people do that that it doesn't matter in practice. 3. Two address code isn't necessarily a win, especially since it doubles the number of REX prefixes. In AArch64 "and x9,x10,x11" is 4 bytes; in x86-64 "mov r9,r10; and r9,r11" is 6 bytes (and clobbers the condition codes). There's a reason compilers love to emit the three-address LEA... 4. Memory operands are nice, though I think the squeeze on instruction space makes them not worth it in practice. I'd rather use that opcode space for more registers. 5. Immediate encoding on x86-64 is crazy inefficient. "mov rax,1" is a whopping 7 bytes.
geon 9y ago
> Intel has done a lot of work > copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee You are contradicting yourself. Intel built an instruction set for hardware. Emulating it on an ARM would completely negate the usefulness of it. There is no copying, since the emulator is built on software. The patents concern hardware design, not software. The whole case should be laughable. It shouldn't even be thinkable to take something like this to court. But I'm sure some layers are going to make a lot of money.
- bitwize 9y ago
  No. If they're anything like the Itanium ISA patents, then Intel owns the rights to the instructions themselves and their meanings. Emulation would be infringing.
  - ue_ 9y ago
    I'm a little ignorant on this, but how can you own the rights to instructions? Isn't that the same as owning the rights to an API, or the naming and operation of functions? I mean, would I be infringing if I re-implemented the C standard library, or the standard library of some language with a copyrighted spec? How can you even patent something like that? It goes beyond software patents, as it appears to me. But again, I'm very ignorant of this.
    - dboreham 9y ago
      We're not talking here about what is right, or even what is correct under the law. We're talking about what a set of lawyers think they can plausibly use to bring an infringement case and not be laughed out of court. A broad spectrum of possibilities.
      - benchaney 9y ago
        Actually this sub thread is about what is right. > To be fair Intel has done a lot of work to make the x86 as great as possible. Patent lawsuits are awful. I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

KevinIsMyName 9y ago

I assume lawyers on both sides have already hands full of work. I imagine these huge corporations spend lots of money on legal.

bfe 9y ago
http://x-r.ai/ http://x-r.ai/ is working on a patent attorney AI to automate a lot of patent attorney work to resolve patent disputes more quickly and cheaply.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  Hope they don't violate any patents in this process.
  - killin_dan 9y ago
    On the other hand, maybe they could violate them left and right and let the code sort it out.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Is there a version that works? Really interested in trying it.
  - bfe 9y ago
    you can sign up for updates at http://x-r.ai http://x-r.ai & be notified when it launches. thanks.