6 ms·

It means that you are allowed to design/produce a chip using this instruction set without getting sued.

• jordigh 8y ago
  Just that? With no extra help from them? No schematics or diagrams or documentation? Do you still have to reverse-engineer their work? Did AMD have to get permission from Intel to implement the i386 instruction set?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • otterlicious 8y ago
    Did AMD have to get permission from Intel to implement the i386 instruction set? Yup, and Intel needed permission from AMD to implement the x86_64 instruction set. https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-and-amd-a-long-history-in-court/ https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-and-amd-a-long-history-in-co...
    • jolmg 8y ago
      What about emulators? Did bochs and qemu need to get permission? I'm not really understanding the legal basis here. Did these companies get patents for the instruction sets? Since instruction sets are really like APIs, can people get patents for APIs?
  • orbifold 8y ago
    In the case of ARM you actually have to pay them extra for the privilege to implement your own architecture and there is no guarantee that they will allow you to do it. Furthermore you have to prove to them using their test suite that your implementation is compliant.