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I'm a total lay person here, but my understanding is that designing a new processor is very challenging these days because of the patent situation. That is, so

by kleiba 6y ago

I'm a total lay person here, but my understanding is that designing a new processor is very challenging these days because of the patent situation. That is, so much in hardware design is patented that you're bound to run into problems if you don't know what you're doing. Is this true, and is it of relevance here?

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Not sure of how relevant it is here, but yes, GPUs architectures are bound by tons of patents so you can bet your a$$ that if you were to commercially launch your own GPU IP, you'll have Nvidia's and AMD's lawyers knocking on your door in under 10 seconds. IIRC most companies out there selling GPU IP are still paying royalties to AMD for their patents on shader architecture which they got from their acquisition of ATI which in turn came from their acquisition of ArtX which was founded by people who worked at the long defunct SGI (Silicon Graphics). The funny thing is, if you backtrack through all GPU innovations, most stem from former SGI employees. When 3Dfx went under, even though Nvidia's GPU tech was already superior to anything 3Dfx had, Nvidia immediately swept in and picked their carcass clean, mostly for their patents in this space, so they would have more ammo/leverage against competitors going forward. Regardless how you feel about patents, with their pros and cons, hardware engineering is a capital intensive business and without patents to protect your expensive R&D, it wouldn't be a viable business.
- joshspankit 6y ago
  To clarify what I think is the relevance, as well as to explore my own questions: If someone were to clean-room design their own GPU chip, how likely is it that Nvidia and AMD would come down on them anyway simply by virtue of the fact that they (presumably) have patents on everything that you could think of putting in that chip? In essence: do you now have to be an expert in what you’re not allowed to put in before you even start?
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    To clarify further, Nvidia and AMD (and probably other small players like ARM, Quallcomm, Imagination) own the patents on core shader tech, which are the building blocks of any modern GPU design. If you want to design a GPU IP that works around all their patents, you probably can, but unless you're a John Carmack x10, your resulting design would be horribly inefficient and not competitive enough to be worth the expensive silicon it will be etched on and probably not compatible to any modern API like Vulcan or DirectX. But if you just want to build your own meme GPU for education/shits and giggles, that doesn't follow any patents or APIs, then you can and some people already did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs
  - ericbarrett 6y ago
    I am not in the graphics space but I am quite familiar with tech business practices. I think the chance you would be sued is near 100%. If you released and showed any market traction at all, you would immediately become a threat to the duopoly; they surely remember the rise of 3Dfx. Don’t bother arguing the merits of the patents because it would be a business decision, not a technical one—this is the kind of thing that’s decided at the C-level and then justified (or cautioned against) by the company’s legal team, not the other way around. Patents are merely leverage to effect the defense of the business, and you can be sure they’ll be used.
    - joshspankit 6y ago
      I agree with you (and definitely a conversation worth having) but for the sake of this thread let’s pretend that legal action would only be taken when a patent was actually matched with what was put in the chip.
      - ericbarrett 6y ago
        I’m sad you’re being downvoted because I would also have been interested in the discussion, but I think the unfortunate reality is it just doesn’t matter that much.
- ericbarrett 6y ago
  I learned GL in the 1990s on SGI systems. Shaders didn’t exist, poly counts were in the 100s, and textures were a massive processing burden. The rendering pipeline of course was quite different. And yet so much is the same! Code organization, data types, all is quite familiar, whether it’s OpenGL or DirectX or what not. The achievements of SGI engineers have literally benefited generations.
  - lkcl 6y ago
    Jeff's evaluation of GPLGPU is fascinating: https://jbush001.github.io/2016/07/24/gplgpu-walkthrough.html https://jbush001.github.io/2016/07/24/gplgpu-walkthrough.htm... you are absolutely correct in that everything has moved on from "Fixed Function" of SGI, and how GPLGPU works (worked) - btw it's NOT GPL-licensed: Frank sadly made his own license, "GPL words but with non-commercial tacked onto the end" which ... er... isn't GPL... sigh - but everything commercially has now moved on to Shader Engines. that basically means Vulkan. however you may be fascinated to know, from Jeff's evaluation, that there are still startling similarities in basic functionality in not-GPL GPLGPU and in modern designs targetted at Shader Engines.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  I don’t see how patents acquired from SGI could possibly still be protected and require licensing.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > I don’t see how patents acquired from SGI could possibly still be protected and require licensing. It isn't those patents specifically, but the IP developed on top of the safe harbor that those additional patents provided at the time. It is difficult at any particular point in time to develop IP in this space without infringing patents that are still in force, because even if you go back and base your work on patents that have expired, unless you are very careful and clever you will be infringing on newer patents that are themselves also based on those expired patents. You may be able to show that some of the key claims of those newer patents were "obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art" and/or come up with prior art to give yourself some wiggle room, but that's a lot of effort with an uncertain result. A surer strategy is to patent new developments on top of current IP that, while you can't use them without licensing the original IP, neither can the holder of the original IP, and if your new stuff is in their critical path and engineering around it would be annoying enough, you may be able to get them to negotiate a cross-licensing arrangement or something similar. IOW, if someone's moat is stopping you or their tolls are too high, start digging a moat around their moat to get them to cut you a deal. It's still tricky though: you can't patent stuff too far ahead of where the original IP holder is going because you may guess wrong about where they (or the industry) is going to have to go, or even if you're right your patents may expire before they become important (and you ran out of money to keep building more IP on top because your innovation wasn't implementable yet or you were too early to market), and if you aren't far enough ahead you run the risk of them patenting whatever innovation you are working on before you do, or even having the "obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art" shoe on the other foot (and their legal department is bigger than yours).
- arithmomachist 6y ago
  >Nvidia immediately swept in and picked their carcass clean, mostly for their patents in this space, so they would have more ammo/leverage against competitors going forward. That's surely not a healthy situation either. Courts should never be a central part of competition among businesses.
- bserge 6y ago
  Aren't patents supposed to expire? Isn't that the idea, you have a patent for 10-20 years, build your business (which AMD/nVidia did, very successfully) then everyone is free to use it, possibly leading to innovation? I'm poorly versed in this, so if anyone with more knowledge could share some thoughts, that would be appreciated.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    Correct, patents in the US expire after 20 years.
    - JPLeRouzic 6y ago
      And if I remember correctly, (I wrote my last patent 10 years ago) there are annuals fees that would invalidate any right if not paid.
  - lkcl 6y ago
    only if the patent holder does not create an "improvement" on the old one. then the older (referenced) patent is extended. Bosch have done this specifically so that they can hold on to the original CAN Bus patent.
    - webmaven 6y ago
      > only if the patent holder does not create an "improvement" on the old one. then the older (referenced) patent is extended. Bosch have done this specifically so that they can hold on to the original CAN Bus patent. The original patent still expires. The problem is when the patented improvement is obvious enough that anyone who wants to build on the expired patent is going to want to do it the way the new patent does it (ie. patent N+1 is "just" a modernized reimplementation of patent N), but un-obvious enough (to a "person of ordinary skill in the art", superficially at least) that it is still patentable. Alternatively, the original patent holder throws money and people at the problem and patents every variation on their original patent they can conceive of, and every N*M combination with their other patents, even ones they have no intention of reducing to practice, maybe even ones that seem nonsensical, just in case. IBM used to be notorious for this.
10000truths 6y ago
Yes, IP cores are very expensive to license, if they’re even available for licensing at all. This is part of the appeal of RISC-V - an open-spec, royalty-free processor architecture that is free of charge for chip designers to implement.
- admax88q 6y ago
  RISC-V is not an IP core, just an instruction set architecture. Any implementation of it has the exact same patent minefield to navigate as any other ISA. Most of the patents are around implementation techniques not instruction set.
  - jecel 6y ago
    The RISC-V instruction set was carefully designed not to require the use of any currently valid patents to do an implementation. It is up to each processor designer to not violate any patents in their project.
    - lkcl 6y ago
      this is unfortunately not true (that the RISC-V ISA was designed not to require currently-valid patents). people may believe that to be the case, but it's not. from 3rd hand i've heard that IBM has absolutely tons of patents that RISC-V infringes. whether IBM decide to take action on that is another matter. they're a bit of a heavyweight, so there would have to be substantial harm to their business for the "800 lb gorilla" effect to kick in.
      - jecel 6y ago
        See this report about the origin of each basic RISC-V instruction: https://riscv.org/technical/specifications/risc-v-genealogy/ https://riscv.org/technical/specifications/risc-v-genealogy/ Of course, the various extensions might violate current patents (I would guess that packed SIMD and cryptography extensions are particularly at risk). But the basic ISA does not use anything that was not already widely adopted by 2003.
pkaye 6y ago
This processor seems to be a barrel processor architecture from my quick look so not entirely new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_processor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_processor
vmception 6y ago
Yes but there are alot of profitable applications which dont need to be advertised. You run it in-house and make money on the output, ie. ML farms or mining. You dont take preorders for the hardware at all and just have boutique custom units and nobody knows the architecture, even if you offer some remote rental/SaaS tool.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > Yes but there are alot of profitable applications which dont need to be advertised. You run it in-house and make money on the output, ie. ML farms or mining. You dont take preorders for the hardware at all and just have boutique custom units and nobody knows the architecture, even if you offer some remote rental/SaaS tool. That can work, but only up to the point that a disgruntled former employee blows the whistle.
  - vmception 6y ago
    As if they would even know the issue and risk breaking all their civil contracts and criminal trade secrets protections with their guesswork

by kleiba 6y ago

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

Not sure of how relevant it is here, but yes, GPUs architectures are bound by tons of patents so you can bet your a$$ that if you were to commercially launch your own GPU IP, you'll have Nvidia's and AMD's lawyers knocking on your door in under 10 seconds. IIRC most companies out there selling GPU IP are still paying royalties to AMD for their patents on shader architecture which they got from their acquisition of ATI which in turn came from their acquisition of ArtX which was founded by people who worked at the long defunct SGI (Silicon Graphics). The funny thing is, if you backtrack through all GPU innovations, most stem from former SGI employees. When 3Dfx went under, even though Nvidia's GPU tech was already superior to anything 3Dfx had, Nvidia immediately swept in and picked their carcass clean, mostly for their patents in this space, so they would have more ammo/leverage against competitors going forward. Regardless how you feel about patents, with their pros and cons, hardware engineering is a capital intensive business and without patents to protect your expensive R&D, it wouldn't be a viable business.

joshspankit 6y ago
To clarify what I think is the relevance, as well as to explore my own questions: If someone were to clean-room design their own GPU chip, how likely is it that Nvidia and AMD would come down on them anyway simply by virtue of the fact that they (presumably) have patents on everything that you could think of putting in that chip? In essence: do you now have to be an expert in what you’re not allowed to put in before you even start?
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  To clarify further, Nvidia and AMD (and probably other small players like ARM, Quallcomm, Imagination) own the patents on core shader tech, which are the building blocks of any modern GPU design. If you want to design a GPU IP that works around all their patents, you probably can, but unless you're a John Carmack x10, your resulting design would be horribly inefficient and not competitive enough to be worth the expensive silicon it will be etched on and probably not compatible to any modern API like Vulcan or DirectX. But if you just want to build your own meme GPU for education/shits and giggles, that doesn't follow any patents or APIs, then you can and some people already did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs
- ericbarrett 6y ago
  I am not in the graphics space but I am quite familiar with tech business practices. I think the chance you would be sued is near 100%. If you released and showed any market traction at all, you would immediately become a threat to the duopoly; they surely remember the rise of 3Dfx. Don’t bother arguing the merits of the patents because it would be a business decision, not a technical one—this is the kind of thing that’s decided at the C-level and then justified (or cautioned against) by the company’s legal team, not the other way around. Patents are merely leverage to effect the defense of the business, and you can be sure they’ll be used.
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    I agree with you (and definitely a conversation worth having) but for the sake of this thread let’s pretend that legal action would only be taken when a patent was actually matched with what was put in the chip.
    - ericbarrett 6y ago
      I’m sad you’re being downvoted because I would also have been interested in the discussion, but I think the unfortunate reality is it just doesn’t matter that much.
ericbarrett 6y ago
I learned GL in the 1990s on SGI systems. Shaders didn’t exist, poly counts were in the 100s, and textures were a massive processing burden. The rendering pipeline of course was quite different. And yet so much is the same! Code organization, data types, all is quite familiar, whether it’s OpenGL or DirectX or what not. The achievements of SGI engineers have literally benefited generations.
- lkcl 6y ago
  Jeff's evaluation of GPLGPU is fascinating: https://jbush001.github.io/2016/07/24/gplgpu-walkthrough.html https://jbush001.github.io/2016/07/24/gplgpu-walkthrough.htm... you are absolutely correct in that everything has moved on from "Fixed Function" of SGI, and how GPLGPU works (worked) - btw it's NOT GPL-licensed: Frank sadly made his own license, "GPL words but with non-commercial tacked onto the end" which ... er... isn't GPL... sigh - but everything commercially has now moved on to Shader Engines. that basically means Vulkan. however you may be fascinated to know, from Jeff's evaluation, that there are still startling similarities in basic functionality in not-GPL GPLGPU and in modern designs targetted at Shader Engines.
ComputerGuru 6y ago
I don’t see how patents acquired from SGI could possibly still be protected and require licensing.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > I don’t see how patents acquired from SGI could possibly still be protected and require licensing. It isn't those patents specifically, but the IP developed on top of the safe harbor that those additional patents provided at the time. It is difficult at any particular point in time to develop IP in this space without infringing patents that are still in force, because even if you go back and base your work on patents that have expired, unless you are very careful and clever you will be infringing on newer patents that are themselves also based on those expired patents. You may be able to show that some of the key claims of those newer patents were "obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art" and/or come up with prior art to give yourself some wiggle room, but that's a lot of effort with an uncertain result. A surer strategy is to patent new developments on top of current IP that, while you can't use them without licensing the original IP, neither can the holder of the original IP, and if your new stuff is in their critical path and engineering around it would be annoying enough, you may be able to get them to negotiate a cross-licensing arrangement or something similar. IOW, if someone's moat is stopping you or their tolls are too high, start digging a moat around their moat to get them to cut you a deal. It's still tricky though: you can't patent stuff too far ahead of where the original IP holder is going because you may guess wrong about where they (or the industry) is going to have to go, or even if you're right your patents may expire before they become important (and you ran out of money to keep building more IP on top because your innovation wasn't implementable yet or you were too early to market), and if you aren't far enough ahead you run the risk of them patenting whatever innovation you are working on before you do, or even having the "obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art" shoe on the other foot (and their legal department is bigger than yours).
arithmomachist 6y ago
>Nvidia immediately swept in and picked their carcass clean, mostly for their patents in this space, so they would have more ammo/leverage against competitors going forward. That's surely not a healthy situation either. Courts should never be a central part of competition among businesses.
bserge 6y ago
Aren't patents supposed to expire? Isn't that the idea, you have a patent for 10-20 years, build your business (which AMD/nVidia did, very successfully) then everyone is free to use it, possibly leading to innovation? I'm poorly versed in this, so if anyone with more knowledge could share some thoughts, that would be appreciated.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Correct, patents in the US expire after 20 years.
  - JPLeRouzic 6y ago
    And if I remember correctly, (I wrote my last patent 10 years ago) there are annuals fees that would invalidate any right if not paid.
- lkcl 6y ago
  only if the patent holder does not create an "improvement" on the old one. then the older (referenced) patent is extended. Bosch have done this specifically so that they can hold on to the original CAN Bus patent.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > only if the patent holder does not create an "improvement" on the old one. then the older (referenced) patent is extended. Bosch have done this specifically so that they can hold on to the original CAN Bus patent. The original patent still expires. The problem is when the patented improvement is obvious enough that anyone who wants to build on the expired patent is going to want to do it the way the new patent does it (ie. patent N+1 is "just" a modernized reimplementation of patent N), but un-obvious enough (to a "person of ordinary skill in the art", superficially at least) that it is still patentable. Alternatively, the original patent holder throws money and people at the problem and patents every variation on their original patent they can conceive of, and every N*M combination with their other patents, even ones they have no intention of reducing to practice, maybe even ones that seem nonsensical, just in case. IBM used to be notorious for this.

10000truths 6y ago

Yes, IP cores are very expensive to license, if they’re even available for licensing at all. This is part of the appeal of RISC-V - an open-spec, royalty-free processor architecture that is free of charge for chip designers to implement.

admax88q 6y ago
RISC-V is not an IP core, just an instruction set architecture. Any implementation of it has the exact same patent minefield to navigate as any other ISA. Most of the patents are around implementation techniques not instruction set.
- jecel 6y ago
  The RISC-V instruction set was carefully designed not to require the use of any currently valid patents to do an implementation. It is up to each processor designer to not violate any patents in their project.
  - lkcl 6y ago
    this is unfortunately not true (that the RISC-V ISA was designed not to require currently-valid patents). people may believe that to be the case, but it's not. from 3rd hand i've heard that IBM has absolutely tons of patents that RISC-V infringes. whether IBM decide to take action on that is another matter. they're a bit of a heavyweight, so there would have to be substantial harm to their business for the "800 lb gorilla" effect to kick in.
    - jecel 6y ago
      See this report about the origin of each basic RISC-V instruction: https://riscv.org/technical/specifications/risc-v-genealogy/ https://riscv.org/technical/specifications/risc-v-genealogy/ Of course, the various extensions might violate current patents (I would guess that packed SIMD and cryptography extensions are particularly at risk). But the basic ISA does not use anything that was not already widely adopted by 2003.

pkaye 6y ago

This processor seems to be a barrel processor architecture from my quick look so not entirely new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_processor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_processor

vmception 6y ago

Yes but there are alot of profitable applications which dont need to be advertised. You run it in-house and make money on the output, ie. ML farms or mining. You dont take preorders for the hardware at all and just have boutique custom units and nobody knows the architecture, even if you offer some remote rental/SaaS tool.

webmaven 6y ago
> Yes but there are alot of profitable applications which dont need to be advertised. You run it in-house and make money on the output, ie. ML farms or mining. You dont take preorders for the hardware at all and just have boutique custom units and nobody knows the architecture, even if you offer some remote rental/SaaS tool. That can work, but only up to the point that a disgruntled former employee blows the whistle.
- vmception 6y ago
  As if they would even know the issue and risk breaking all their civil contracts and criminal trade secrets protections with their guesswork