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Oh yeah, in a past life I was a CPU logic designer for walk-in, refrigerated mainframes. I was always amused by youngsters thinking they had invented things lik
by dbcurtis 3y ago
Oh yeah, in a past life I was a CPU logic designer for walk-in, refrigerated mainframes. I was always amused by youngsters thinking they had invented things like pipelines and branch prediction. Seymour Cray and Gene Amdahl were prolific inventors.
- dbcurtis 3y agoAnd Bob Barton deserves mention for being extremely far-sighted.
- Tuna-Fish 3y agoI posit that this retreading of old paths was very good for the industry. All the truly important CPU design features were first invented using discrete logic for mainframes and minicomputers. Then, 20 years later when it became possible to fit them onto a single chip, they were all out of patent, which is precisely what made the early microcomputer industry so competitive. When none of the important stuff could be patented anymore, you could only compete on merit, not by getting a government enforce a monopoly on some critical piece of your design.
- dbcurtis 3y agoI think you make a good point. Although I have seen patents for reinventing something in an expired patent :)