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AMD Zen microarchitecture and Intel's Ocean Cove patent
- jml7c5 5y agoIt turns out that this "story" was intentional misdirection, posted to test how tech information is misinterpreted and spread. Intel has not patented something of AMD's design. Underfox writes: >Now that a sufficient amount of time has passed and I have collected a sufficient amount of data, let's explain today's social experiment. >For those who don't know, in addition to my work with telecommunications, I'm also involved in researching complex networks, where among many lines of research is the way information propagates in social networks. >With the data obtained today, I was able to help a great friend with his research and, at the same time, show how technology information is misinterpreted and why filtering is so necessary. https://twitter.com/Underfox3/status/1511865763132542982 https://twitter.com/Underfox3/status/1511865763132542982
- gjsman-1000 5y agoWell... AMD can just cite their presentation as prior art, and it will be struck down. If anything, Intel was foolish to waste money on bored lawyers.
- physicsguy 5y agoThey can only do it if it was not publicly disclosed. You cannot patent something which has been kept a trade secret.
- matt123456789 5y agoI don’t understand what you mean. Does AMD’s public disclosure of the microarchitecture prevent them from filing prior art?
- bogwog 5y agoYeah that comment is confusingly worded. I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that there is no explicit relationship between patent-ability and something being a trade secret. The important thing is just that patent applications are public, so once you file, your "secrets" are no longer secret.
- colejohnson66 5y agoThis. The whole idea of a patent is that companies share the details of the invention in the patent in exchange for a temporary monopoly on the idea.
- mojomark 5y agoI think it's actually the opposite. In the US, the regulations changed several years ago from "First to Invent" (which is ambiguous) to "First to File" (which is pretty clear). In any event, I think you can only claim something as prior art if it's in the public domain. So, if you're very shady/greedy/lack an ethical backbone, and you get your hands on a private brief that isn't protected intellectual property, technically you can file that patent. I assume the owner could try to prove theft if they can determine how the IP was leaked and stolen intently.
- isanengineer 5y agoThose AMD presentations are publicly available though. It looks like hot chips is a tech conference, and those AMD presentations were published as part of HC 28. I’ll follow up with a link if I can find one, but I think it’s pretty clear they are not in any way trade secrets.
- rob74 5y agoThat's the way it should work, at least. But I have a nagging feeling that Intel wouldn't have done this so brazenly if (with the correct amount of lawyers and friendly judges) it wouldn't have seen a chance of the patent being upheld. Then again, "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", so, who knows?!
- TD-Linux 5y agoStrictly speaking, only the claims matter, and so the text if those would need to be read and used to determine whether it can be invalidated due to prior art. The claims have very little to do with the diagrams supplied, rather they are about a way to compress cache coherency transfers if the line is all zeros (kind of like LPDDR has, in a way). That said, copying so many of a competitors' slides into figures is still stupid as it is highly unlikely to give a judge a great first impression.
- cogman10 5y agoIDK about intel, but quiet a few companies in their sphere offer employees bonuses for patents. It would not surprise me in the least if this was something some employee did to get a pay bump.
- rob74 5y agoI was thinking about that too - kudos to them if they pulled this off, but I hope they're not with the company anymore...
- paulmd 5y agoNot how it works, actually. The system changed in 2013 and now whoever is first to file gets the patent, even if someone else can demonstrate prior art. https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/patents/first-to-file-rule/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/patents/first-t... AMD should have filed their own patents before talking about it publicly - that's how the game is now played. If you don't - it's now possible for someone else to file a patent on your own invention.
- eightysixfour 5y agoThis is not true - prior art is still a test for striking down a patent in court, it is just not taken into account when two entities are competing to file the same patent at the same time.
- jacquesm 5y agoThey can, but if it is based on industrial espionage, outright theft or plagiarism then that would definitely be a reason for them to lose the patent.
- nullc 5y ago> Not how it works, actually. The system changed in 2013 and now whoever is first to file gets the patent, even if someone else can demonstrate prior art. This is not true, and it's a really damaging misrepresentation. First to file deals with interference between parallel applications, it doesn't change prior art based on publication. If two parties show up claiming patents on the same thing based on unpublished work, under the prior rules the party that was willing to fabricate the earliest date of invention won, under current rules the first to file wins. The misinformation you're spreading is particularly pernicious because the change increased the incentives for publishing your work early and often (to establish prior art ASAP)-- but the misinterpretation implies you should avoid publishing at all costs (to avoid a third party dishonestly patenting your publications).
- tyrfing 5y agoThe presentation was cited as prior art by Intel.
- ZeroCool2u 5y agoAt first glance this doesn't look like an exaggeration. It's basically a 1-to-1 rip off when you place the images side by side. Even the labels within the diagram are copied directly.
- xpuente 5y agohttps://twitter.com/KarbinC/status/1511715859789717510?s=20&t=46bbTcl1xkSo_kUKhFuf7A https://twitter.com/KarbinC/status/1511715859789717510?s=20&...
- dgarrett 5y agoThat’s pretty standard text in tech patent. What exactly would it mean to file a patent “as a joke?”
- xpuente 5y agoNo. Those figures are pretty "standard". Neither AMD or Intel have "invented" an OOO processor. Those figures mean nothing. Are the standard "big" boxes in any modern processor. The key details are inside. E.g., https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,282,296 https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,282,296
- thayne 5y agoBut it was accepted? It wouldn't be the first time a patent for something absurd was granted.
- Ygg2 5y agoIt can't be worse than patenting laser as cat exercise tool. This is not a joke.
- resoluteteeth 5y agoIt doesn't work that way. It's one thing to cite it as prior art, but if they are listing it as an example embodiment of their invention then the patent is invalid. The idea of filing a patent application as a "joke" is nonsense.
- WithinReason 5y agoIt seems to me the Intel patent is using the AMD designs as examples, not something that's actually patented.
- ledoge 5y agoThose slides aren't the only thing they copied: https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1511718827083669508 https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1511718827083669508
- curiousgal 5y ago
- jacquesm 5y agoBooks are published in batches of 'n' characters called sentences. Really, Twitter is just another medium.
- snovv_crash 5y agoIf you don't believe data presented by the guy who was editor for Anandtech for how many years, that's on you.
- gruez 5y agoTo be fair not everyone knows who @IanCutress is. The profile description of "Consultant, Chief Analyst, Influencer." doesn't really indicate he's a subject matter expert.
- rahimiali 5y agoIt doesn’t matter who these people are. If you’ve seen patents before, you can cause from the screenshots how similar the diagrams are to the sources.
- monocasa 5y agoIt's literally quotes from an article he wrote about Zen for Anandtech cribbed in the patent.
- dmatech 5y agoSo they cited Ian's 2016 article (which contained the AMD diagrams), then basically rendered those same diagrams in black and white in the patent. Pretty lazy.
- thayne 5y agoSo... Would the patent claim be a copyright infringement of AMDs presentation?
- cogman10 5y agoAMD could invalidate it as prior art pretty easily.
- meragrin_ 5y agoHow so? The claims have very little to do with the diagrams. They are only there as an example processor for the claims being presented. The claims are specifically about cache. More specifically clearing/invalidation. What better way to prevent the competition from implementing something similar than using the competitions architecture as the base to show how it could be implemented? It is Intel's prior art against AMD.
- Iwan-Zotow 5y agoAs prior art. You cannot patent things which are not your invention and a prior knowledge. Would be hard to proof it is your invention if you use knowledge from your main competitor in the patent application
- meragrin_ 5y agoThey are not trying to patent anything other than their own work. Their work is something which can be added to certain processors(AMD's included). Why not base the example on a competitor's processor so there is less of a chance someone could argue it is reliant on Intel's processor architecture?
- snarfy 5y agoThat's how the US patent system works now. "The first inventor to file (FITF) provision of the America Invents Act transitions the U.S. to a first-inventor-to-file system from a first-to-invent system and became effective on March 16, 2013" https://www.uspto.gov/patents/first-inventor-file-fitf-resources https://www.uspto.gov/patents/first-inventor-file-fitf-resou...
- gruez 5y agoTo be clear, first-to-file just means that in the event that the patent is granted, it's awarded to the person who filed first instead of the "actual" inventor. However, the patent can still be invalidated for prior art. The net effect of this is that AMD lost their ability to patent their invention by not filing first.
- mox1 5y agoPerhaps this was the entire point of Intel's work here??? Worst case scenario for Intel they block AMD from patenting (and allowing Intel to use it).
- gruez 5y agoPresumably if AMD hasn't patented it by now, they weren't ever going to patent it. CPUs take years to develop, so by the time something shows up in marketing slides (ie. release is imminent in a few months) it would have been years since the idea was first conceived.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoAnd first to file doesn't mean first to file with the USPTO. If you have a great idea for air-conditioned socks, you file your initial notes/work with your patent attorney, and that is sufficient (general hand-waving about officer of the court and so on.)
- ordu 5y ago> The net effect of this is that AMD lost their ability to patent their invention by not filing first. It can explain Intel's move to file the patent, which seems stupid at a first glance. Anti-Hanlon Razor: never attribute to a stupidity anything that was done by an intelligent entity.
- AshamedCaptain 5y agoThese diagrams could practically describe any processor, they are not even x86 specific. The fact that the layout of the figures is similar is kind of suspicious but I would guess they just come from the same decades-old book (or patent). They do reuse these type of quasi-standard figures quite often in order to churn out patents faster and faster. You'll find the actual new content (probably minuscule) somewhere in the claims. The patent system is just that ridiculous.
- loeg 5y agoThe specific numbers also match, but I agree that the diagrams are fairly generic.
- sabas123 5y agoWhy would one ever do this as a requirement for patentability is that it doesn't exist as prior art?
- MauranKilom 5y agoBecause they're not patenting the stuff in the figures. This is the equivalent of plagiarizing the "related literature" section of a paper - lazy, in bad taste, but need not invalidate the actual contributions/claims made.
- icegreentea2 5y ago...I think the actual patent is on moving the cache snooping into the interconnect? I think all of the figures presented are part of Intel's claim that any processor that implements cache snooping in the interconnect are subject to this patent.
- monocasa 5y agoSorta. Cache snooping has been part of the interconnect for years (it arguably is the interconnect), but this is about snooping cache line zeroing instructions without having to go out to memory as far as I understand it. So if a line is shared in two caches, it can be zeroed in both without getting the DRAM controller or even L3 involved.
- jsnell 5y agoRemember the advice of "How to read a patent in 60 seconds" [0]. In this case there are two very short independent claims (1 and 3), all the way at the last page. They both seem to just be talking of some specifics on cache coherency. [0] https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-second/ https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent...
- notacoward 5y agoWhile this might be true from a legal standpoint, even using a competitor's presentation for the description seems a bit lazy, and getting caught at it is quite embarrassing. It implies that nobody at Intel can describe a modern processor very well.
- MauranKilom 5y agoIt's definitely lazy that they didn't create their own description, but how does it follow from this that they can't?
- ncmncm 5y agoIf it's published, it is prior art.
- MauranKilom 5y agoThey are not trying to patent what's shown in the figures, those are just given as background information. A patent for a screwdriver will most certainly also describe screws, regardless of whether screws are prior art. Patentability is solely a matter of the claims made at the end. Those claims will of course be interpreted in the context set out by the method description, but it is entirely normal for a patent to describe the state of the art before discussing a novel method (about which actual claims are then made). (IANAL)
- temac 5y ago
- dboreham 5y agoUSPTO will actually search for this kind of thing (assuming the situation is as-described, which I suspect is not assured). Source: this happened to me -- I wrote an internal doc describing a new product feature. That doc was used both our product documentation team has the basis for user documentation; and by our patent team as the basis for a patent application. When the patent was reviewed, the examiner found the user doc on the internet and rejected the application due to prior art. We had to prove to the USPTO that both were derived from an older doc (by finding the older doc with timestamp and sending it to them with associated legal knobs and whistles).
- bejelentkezni 5y agoHaven't AMD and Intel had to share all their patents with each other for the past 20 years anyway? I remember some agreement coming out of the ashes of the amd64 debacle. And the patent text doesn't seem to have anything to do with the images.
- sascha_sl 5y agoOnly for x86 up until that point in time.
- Sparkyte 5y agoDefinitely a lawsuit is going to come of this. I'm not even talking the blatent copy of the presentation but the blatent patenting of memory on interposer. This is basically what AMD's 2016 patent encompases for much of Ryzen's design architecture especially with HBM. Now I think where Intel might be in the right is that they will claim improvement on AMD's patent and design. But it will be a stretch considering they are using AMD's presentation. Which obviously in court it will incredibly hard for Intel to prove no wrong doing. NAL but you have to check your patents before submitting them. Intel went full patent troll.
- TomVDB 5y agoThe “NAL” statement wasn’t necessary: it was totally obvious the moment you wrote “definitely.” There’s a 99.999% certainty that this non-issue will NOT result in a lawsuit.
- Sparkyte 5y agoGonna NAL anytime it comes to such subjects. ;) Amazon has a full team of patent lawyers on retainer just to submit a patent.
- MauranKilom 5y ago> Amazon has a full team of patent lawyers on retainer just to submit a patent. So does any larger tech company, no?
- Aisen8010 5y agoUnfortunately the author chose to show his arguments in the Twitter. The subject is interesting, but I have a hard time following the discussion there.