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Just because the patents have expired doesn’t make it ‘free as in freedom’ - someone has to design the CPU and there is no modern open source x86-64 implementat
by klelatti 5y ago
Just because the patents have expired doesn’t make it ‘free as in freedom’ - someone has to design the CPU and there is no modern open source x86-64 implementation.
So right now you can buy from Intel / AMD (completely closed source and with ME nonsense etc). License your IP from Arm for a not excessive fee and inspect the code or use open source RISC-V implementation.
And finally writing code for Arm / RISC-V doesn’t require any sort of legal agreement or authorisation.
- jart 5y agoOnly if you're coming to open source with the mindset of a taker rather than a giver. Nevertheless there are open source implementations of x86 architecture. I've written one. Bochs and QEmu have written another. If you feel that it must be implemented in hardware to count then a director at oracle actually wrote a verilog implementation of 80186 a few years ago.
- klelatti 5y agoEmulators != Open source core If you want to go back to 1982 then fine. I'll keep running on my Arm and RISC-V cores thanks. I do find the enthusiasm for the utterly closed oligopoly of x86 (with all the dubious ME stuff), with literally no modern open source hardware implementation, odd when you could be getting behind RISC-V.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]