4 ms·

I used to be quite excited for the mill. But nowadays I don't believe it will go anywhere. The mill has been in development for almost 20 years and it has liter

I used to be quite excited for the mill. But nowadays I don't believe it will go anywhere. The mill has been in development for almost 20 years and it has literally nothing of substance to show for it. Not even something you can run on an FPGA. For reference when the mill project was started Intel was releasing pentium 4.

h0l0cube 5y ago
I'm really interested in the Mill architecture too, but I've always wondered what it's target market would be. Does it offer a power-performance-price profile that hasn't been serviced yet? Or maybe it's faster/cheaper/less-power all-round compared to any other general purpose CPU? It's hard to know without real performance metrics.
meltedcapacitor 5y ago
Also curious nobody else tried to implement the core ideas independently in that time.
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  https://millcomputing.com/patents/ https://millcomputing.com/patents/
  - Filligree 5y ago
    So once again patents have locked up something useful.
    - h0l0cube 5y ago
      To be fair, it's a number of useful innovations that have taken decades of research, and would not have otherwise been done without property rights grants some sort of pay-out at the end. And many of the ideas would require a dramatic overhaul of how compilers generate and optimize code, and so they couldn't just be co-opted by existing processor families without breaking compatibility.
  - Woodi 5y ago
    Ah, so they jus waiting until their patents expire ? Or maybe they waiting until some needed-by-them patent expire ? Look: MS did not manufacture mouses until mouse patend got famous for making no money. And then it was global must to have. It was impossible to make singleton in C++ in 200x but atomics was described in literature (even in SICP) and only when patent expired Intel made it everyday tool... Patents should be automatically invalidated before half human life time is wasted.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
      IMO patents should have mandatory FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory) licensing. With higher (2x?) license fees allowed if a working prototype has been submitted to the patent office instead of just a design. Incentivize new inventions, but keep profits fair. Incentivize working designs over on-paper ideas. Promote the progress of useful inventions over rent-seeking.
    - rasz 5y ago
      >MS did not manufacture mouses until mouse patend got famous for making no money MS started making mice in 1983 when they released Word.
      - Woodi 5y ago
        And how this detail is relevant to this discussion ?
        rasz 5y ago
        MS decision to make mice had zero to do with any patents. They simply had no products utilizing them before Word.
    - h0l0cube 5y ago
      > It was impossible to make singleton in C++ in 200x but atomics was described in literature (even in SICP) and only when patent expired Intel made it everyday tool I'm curious about what you mean here. Are you taking about an atomic compare and swap operation? I'm sure these have been implemented in processors back as far as the 90s, if not earlier.
  - meltedcapacitor 5y ago
    Patents do not apply to academic research, do they? Amateurs can also post some VHDL on github without fear of retribution, so still strange. For commercial application, if the ideas are good, and the patents valid, someone could just license them. Or are they sitting on an inbox full of desperate licensing requests that they're ghosting while whining they can't get funding?

h0l0cube 5y ago

I'm really interested in the Mill architecture too, but I've always wondered what it's target market would be. Does it offer a power-performance-price profile that hasn't been serviced yet? Or maybe it's faster/cheaper/less-power all-round compared to any other general purpose CPU? It's hard to know without real performance metrics.

meltedcapacitor 5y ago

Also curious nobody else tried to implement the core ideas independently in that time.

h0l0cube 5y ago
https://millcomputing.com/patents/ https://millcomputing.com/patents/
- Filligree 5y ago
  So once again patents have locked up something useful.
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    To be fair, it's a number of useful innovations that have taken decades of research, and would not have otherwise been done without property rights grants some sort of pay-out at the end. And many of the ideas would require a dramatic overhaul of how compilers generate and optimize code, and so they couldn't just be co-opted by existing processor families without breaking compatibility.
- Woodi 5y ago
  Ah, so they jus waiting until their patents expire ? Or maybe they waiting until some needed-by-them patent expire ? Look: MS did not manufacture mouses until mouse patend got famous for making no money. And then it was global must to have. It was impossible to make singleton in C++ in 200x but atomics was described in literature (even in SICP) and only when patent expired Intel made it everyday tool... Patents should be automatically invalidated before half human life time is wasted.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    IMO patents should have mandatory FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory) licensing. With higher (2x?) license fees allowed if a working prototype has been submitted to the patent office instead of just a design. Incentivize new inventions, but keep profits fair. Incentivize working designs over on-paper ideas. Promote the progress of useful inventions over rent-seeking.
  - rasz 5y ago
    >MS did not manufacture mouses until mouse patend got famous for making no money MS started making mice in 1983 when they released Word.
    - Woodi 5y ago
      And how this detail is relevant to this discussion ?
      - rasz 5y ago
        MS decision to make mice had zero to do with any patents. They simply had no products utilizing them before Word.
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    > It was impossible to make singleton in C++ in 200x but atomics was described in literature (even in SICP) and only when patent expired Intel made it everyday tool I'm curious about what you mean here. Are you taking about an atomic compare and swap operation? I'm sure these have been implemented in processors back as far as the 90s, if not earlier.
- meltedcapacitor 5y ago
  Patents do not apply to academic research, do they? Amateurs can also post some VHDL on github without fear of retribution, so still strange. For commercial application, if the ideas are good, and the patents valid, someone could just license them. Or are they sitting on an inbox full of desperate licensing requests that they're ghosting while whining they can't get funding?