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This leads to an interesting situation, where Intel owns x86 and licenses it to AMD, while AMD owns the amd64 extension and licenses it to Intel. Should one com
by krylon 5y ago
This leads to an interesting situation, where Intel owns x86 and licenses it to AMD, while AMD owns the amd64 extension and licenses it to Intel. Should one company revoke their license, so would the other (I assume, naively), and boom - no more amd64/x86_64 CPUs for you and me. Intel could probably create a new extension to x86, but that would take some time.
And IIRC, AMD's x86 license evaporates automatically, if the company is acquired by someone else, which means the only company that could buy it without disastrous consequences is Intel, who probably would run into some anti-trust issues if they did.
- Beldin 5y agoWhat is it that ensures licensing is required? Patents? Because patents on x86 technology predating amd64 should be expired by now... and without patent protection, another company would be allowed to reverse-engineer it, no?
- ramchip 5y agohttps://www.blopeur.com/2020/04/08/Intel-x86-patent-never-ending.html https://www.blopeur.com/2020/04/08/Intel-x86-patent-never-en... Tl;dr: many new patents have been created over the years, for instance SSE extensions, and those haven't expired.