Intel Threatens To Revoke AMD's x86 License 476
theraindog writes "AMD's former manufacturing division opened for business last week as GlobalFoundries, but the spin-off may run afoul of AMD's 2001 cross-licensing agreement with Intel. Indeed, Intel has formally accused AMD of violating the agreement, and threatened to terminate the company's licenses in 60 days if a resolution is not found. Intel contends that GlobalFoundries is not a subsidiary of AMD, and thus is not covered by the licensing agreement. AMD has fired back, insisting that it has done nothing wrong, and that Intel's threat constitutes a violation of the deal. At stake is not only AMD's ability to build processors that use Intel's x86 technology, but also Intel's ability to use AMD's x86-64 tech in its CPUs."
Well this should be fun to watch (Score:2, Interesting)
This has been brewing for years. AMD with it's anti-competitive lawsuit against Intel, and now this. AMD's suit is mostly won, but Intels new suit could really make things interesting.
AMD's next line of Phenom II are coming out soon and AMD doing better in terms of sales. Intels feeling the pinch from Netbook sales pulling out the rug from the I7's anticipated sales. The market is changing and it favors AMD in the terms that people are spending less. Intel has a lot more to loose then AMD and that's why this is going to be so good.
If Intel wins the consumer will lose, if AMD holds its ground Intel will suffer a large drop in sales and the giant of the company will fall. Any sort of drop in sales from Intel and it will have to make major cutbacks and Intel will loose all sorts of momentum just to save it's cash. The middle ground is what we all will hope for but even that could really hurt the Intel giant.
Fuzzy on x86 IP (Score:5, Interesting)
Old and busted = Mhz (Score:5, Interesting)
New hotness = Lawyers on retainer!
I for one, will miss the Megahertz Myth race.. But hey, it might go crazy when AMD has a GPU as the Vector CPU in the computer, and Intel has to sell a 63-bit processor.
I guess it will be exciting to watch new developments again.. Seems they've gotten a little to comfortable with each others positions lately..
Re:and the answer is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Poor Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
GF may not be a "subsidiary" according to Intel (Score:3, Interesting)
...but isn't that generally what a company that is in majority controlled by another company called?
Also, would AMD really have been so short-sighted as to sign a cross-licensing agreement with Intel that wouldn't allow AMD to contract an unlicensed third party to fabricate AMD's designs under AMD's licenses as an agent of AMD?
Re:if they do that (Score:4, Interesting)
But the big draw of windows is the inertia of 1,000,000 one-off apps that businesses have written. Microsoft would be scared of people moving to another architecture just because if people were making a (painful) switch anyway, they might look at the alternatives.
Re:MAD (Score:4, Interesting)
Something like that, but not perfectly symmetrically. While x86_64 is well-enough established that it would be inconvenient for Intel to have to go back to x86 and build a new, non-derivative extension with similar capabilities, it would be less of a problem for them than AMD losing the rights to use x86-anything.
Given that Intel and AMD don't have serious competition for desktop PCs right now, its possible that the a result that hurts Intel a lot but AMD more in the short term could benefit Intel in the long term, though really the intent here is almost certainly to get concessions from AMD on the basis that Intel may be able to prevail in court, and AMD stands to lose more if the agreement is terminated; it is extremely unlikely that Intel's goal is to terminate the agreement.
Re:Fuzzy on x86 IP (Score:3, Interesting)
Not copyright. Patents. [cnet.com].
In other words, Intel claims patents over much of the technology that makes an x86 an x86, and AMD agreed (back in 2001--the patent cross-licensing agreement that's in dispute in this issue). AMD could hardly walk away from the agreement now* and continue to manufacture x86-descended CPUs--their previous acceptance of the patents would be evidence against them in Intel's inevitable patent infringement suit.
No, I Am Not A Lawyer. And I'm sure it's nuanced much more finely than this. But that's kinda the Sesame Street version of how this is shaping up.
Patents.
* Yes, I know, AMD isn't disclaiming the license agreement; they're saying the new Globalfoundaries [globalfoundries.com] fab has rights to those licenses because it's an AMD subsidiary; Intel's saying they aren't and therefore don't inherit the licenses. If it becomes a full-out patent lawsuit nuclear exchange, AMD might be in a position of manufacturing x86s without license, which would be bad, or not manufacturing x86s at all, which would be worse, or not allowing Globalfoundaries to manufacture x86s, which would be stupid.
Re:Fuzzy on x86 IP (Score:3, Interesting)
My understanding is that if you wanted to make a 286 clone designed from scratch, you would probably be in the clear. OTOH, if you want modern extensions like MMX, or even SSE/AMD64, then you need a license for the more modern variations. That said, the whole field is deeply complicated and unclear. Some parts of the situation have never really been tested in court so anybody claiming to have a 100% understanding of the legal issues is almost certainly mistaken.
x86 was a hack anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Not trying to sound like a troll here, but x86 should have been retired decades ago. It designed in a totally different era and was never intended to scale well and its been a series of hacks to get it to do so. ( it was impossible to predict where we were going back then, the cpu industry was far too immature )
Sure, they have done wonders keeping it moving, but its long since time to start over with a clean architecture.
My preference would be MIPS or SPARC inspired, but thats just me, either way its time to move on/up.
Re:Intel will license it (Score:3, Interesting)
The real reason for the licensing had nothing to do with the Judicial system.
In order to bid on certain government/DOD contracts you are required to have a second source for most items. This to prevent all of the usual issues you normally get when dealing with a single source, namely they go out of business and you can't find them any more.
By allowing AMD to license and manufacture, Intel was able to bid on more government contracts. This all occurred back in the 80's prior to Intel dominating the CPU field.
At one level (Score:2, Interesting)
At one level, wouldn't it have been a smarter, lower-litigation-cost approach if AMD had spun off their NON-FOUNDRY (design) operations but kept all the x86 rights under the same house as the foundry? (if the design company wants to make x86 parts with other foundries, as they have done previously if I'm correct, they simply designate it as "design contracting" FOR the Foundry Company which holds the x86 rights (profit stream going to AMD, but that's a contract detail irrelevant to x86 licence).
At another level, what IF Intel ends AMD's x86 licence?
Isn't the point of the licence in the first place that AMD also has their own signifigant patents they could sue Intel for violating? I just don't see the logic in this, especially given that Intel seems to be doing GREAT compared to AMD, and AMD's continued existence gives Intel an anti-monopoly defense as long as they continue to compete in the x86 market.
At another level, this certainly seems big enough an issue to bring up the legitimacy of patent monopolies with regards to anti-trust law. US law doesn't generally hold (business) monopolies to be illegal per se, but I believe EU law *DOES*, and if Intel would gain a mainstream CPU monopoly by kicking AMD out of the x86 business, there would be repurcussions. If there was no x86 competition (VIA of course "exists"), the chances of EU nullifying x86 patents (or establishing "open" standardized licencing ala MP3) would seem to rise dramatically, which seems counter to Intel's interests.
Re:if they do that (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny that you should say that, because if the world ends at the infinite loop, we'll all be running Mac OS X [google.com].
Maybe Intel is scared of globalfoundaries? (Score:4, Interesting)
Stupid. (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally think that's a damn stupid threat for Intel to make. AMD is arguably the only company that is preventing Intel from being broken up as a monopoly... you don't threaten to bury your only competition when you're nearly a monopoly. The various governments around the world aren't appreciative of that type of behavior. Unless they would like to be broken into dozens of pieces.
Re:if they do that (Score:3, Interesting)
Bait and swtich (Score:5, Interesting)
This is probably just high stakes gambling. AMD has little to lose. (I say that as an AMD share holder looking at my $2.49 stock price.) Intel has more to lose if they have to redo the 64Bit code. According to the reading, if Intel wins, they get rid of AMD, and become a defacto monopoly having to face US and EU anti-trust regulators. If AMD wins, they get to go along as before and Intel can't sell 64-bit CPUs that people want.
Basically I bet AMD's lawyers are saying "Go ahead make my day." Given the above even if Intel wins in court, they lose.
Bring back Alpha... (Score:3, Interesting)
If I recall correctly, both Intel and AMD have licensed Alpha technology from DEC-I-mean-Compaq-I-mean-HP. Maybe they could get together with a 64-bit architecture that actually works well.
Re:x86 was a hack anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem is, you would lose 50-70% of the existing computer market. Apple tried switching CPUs and in both cases needed massive hand-holding of customers, emulation and dedicated support from vendors. Sorry, but the Windows market doesn't have the same level of vendor committment.
Sure, lots of major software vendors (think Symantec) would help out their customers and would have a new chip architecture supported from day 1. And if there were no other vendors out there, it would be a pain-free transiation. The problem is for Windows that people are running software that was created in 1990. And the vendor may not exist any longer. Microsoft has seen recently how much fun it is to tell these people they have to find a different solution because the world has moved on. It didn't go well.
It would not go well changing hardware architectures, either. What we have is an investment in the billions of dollars in the x86 instruction set. While the source might be somewhat portable (ha!), the object code in user hands is not. Emulation and virtualization could help some, but it isn't the final answer and would not help everyone out. Just as it wasn't the solution for Apple either time.
Re:if they do that (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a lot at stake.
It appears from the snippet of Intel-AMD agreement posted that I've seen (at Tech Report, in comments) that The Foundry Company is perfectly fine under the agreement, as AMD has a certain share of the company, and it formed from AMD's assets.
So Intel might be playing with fire. They lose this, they've just lost x86-64 - and Itanium is dead due to minimal investment in the past 5 years, and this year is when 64-bit x86 will hit the common desktop with Windows 7. More likely that AMD would get that license really loosened if they won and a bunch of money, but you know, if they're backed by ballsy Arabs...
If AMD lose, Intel could have all sorts of fun.
Re:if they do that (Score:3, Interesting)
Theoretically, yes. Practically, no. While it does develop on prior art, it also implements something new, and so it's considered new technology. It'd be like me trying to copyright the letter e, and then suing you for using the word "the".
There's also no way that Intel would pull that trigger. Sure, they could stop AMD from producing chips which support x86. But they'd lose their rights to use x86-64. Seeing as so many of the computers in the world run Microsoft, that'd be corporate suicide: Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has deigned not to implement a 32-bit workaround to the 4GB memory addressing limit. As new computers are routinely being sold with 6GB or more RAM, they'd be writing themselves out of the market for future computer manufacture. While IA64 *is* a supported architecture in 64-bit Windows, nobody's developping for it since Intel decided to scrap the architecture and focus on building x86-64 CPU's. I'm not even sure it's on the supported list for Windows 7, to be honest...
They'd also lose out on a significant chunk of the market, as it would take time for them to start designing and building IA64-based chips again, during which time AMD, which would still be able to use x86-64 in its chip design would be able to dominate the market.
Yes, I'm oversimplifying the intricacies of CPU design. But it's easier to drop a part of your architecture that's really only there for backwards compatibility in the first place than it is to scrap an architecture completely and rework your existing technology to take advantage of an alternative so that your product can remain viable in the marketplace.
Re:if they do that (Score:4, Interesting)
Today's chips, at their core, look a lot like RISC chips. They do a lot of work to hide that, translating x86 ops to native ops. I'd like to see a chip that can run in a x86 'translated' mode and a 'native' RISC mode, much like was done with 32bit/64 bit.
this is, admittedly, a much harder task to accomplish, but exposing a more efficient RISC mode would drive OS vendors to migrate to that. With a bit of careful juggling and VM technology the chips would allow legacy code to run while exposing the more efficient native modes to software that took advantage of it.
Such a shift would take time, but so is 64bit.
Oh well, I guess I'll go back to the idea lab and keep on dreaming.
Re:Intel will license it (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't so much that Intel couldn't keep up with demand, more that IBM's policy required that a second source be available just in case they couldn't.
No, there is no law against being a monopoly. There are laws against being an abusive monopoly however. Intel has been convicted of abusing it's monopoly status in Japan, has at least been accused of doing so in the EU [msn.com]. Maybe AMD could file a complaint in the USA also and have it successfully investigated. Once convicted of being an abusive monopoly the rules change.
In theory the UK monarch can veto any law parliament puts before him or her. In practice, vetoing rarely happens as it can lead to the removal of the monarchs head. Intel should be careful just how far they push this as states could just decide they are abusing their position and remove their right to x86 all together.
Re:if they do that (Score:3, Interesting)
The Cell is PPC based, can be faster than a Core i7 in some respects and is available cheaply in quantity.
Fast as in, will run desktop applications fast, or can do some obscure math calculations fast? Because, according to most reports, Core i7 architectures (or scaled down versions) will be what Intel is going to be pushing for the next few years, and in every report I have read, they totally demolish the competition (x86) in "real" speed. Whereas the Cell was more or less built to run supercomputers, render HD video and do other CPU intensive processes compared to the Core i7 which was designed more for a desktop machine.
Tho it helps if the CPU is designed to handle it.
Yes, but emulation of x86 in the CPU level (or technologies made to make emulation easier) might run afoul of Intel's agreements with AMD
Re:No. (Score:2, Interesting)
AMD and Intel both know how to make good, fast, and (relatively) small hardware to decode variable-length x86 instructions. Yes, of course an x86 decoder is bigger (i.e. more expensive, more difficult to implement, etc.) than a RISC fixed-length decoder, but again, no one cares because we already know how to do it fast enough and cheap enough. Check out an x86 die photo sometime; most of it is cache. Probably about 1/50th is decoder.
If this were all true, how is it that the ARM Cortex-A9 chip is able to get four superscalar RISC cores on a 65nm chip running at over 1GHz ... yet using only about 1 watt of power? Intel's single-core Nano may run at a faster clock, but it uses maybe twice the power and it can't compete with a quad core superscalar RISC CPU.
Oh well, X86 was nice while it lasted (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like we either choose ARM or PowerPC to replace X86 technology and run X86 programs via emulation.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hi there, anyone remember VIA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
If this were all true, how is it that the ARM Cortex-A9 chip is able to get four superscalar RISC cores on a 65nm chip running at over 1GHz
And how many actual instruction does that retire per second? Does its FPU perform at even a fraction of the equivalent x86 (I was surprised to see that it even had one -- I wrote a small program for my ARMv4 phone and spent a solid hour wondering why a program that runs in a few seconds on my desktop took many minutes on there. Punchline: don't do double-precision floating point math on your phone)? What about pagetables, interrupts, DMA and coherent cache? Memory controller? FSB/QPI?
ARM is a wonderful architecture for my mobile phone but it's never going to be enough for actual work. Maybe a netbook running a stripper version of 'nix, but I'd have to see it first to believe it.
Re:if they do that (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not true. Windows NT has run on Mips, i860, Alpha, PPC and Itanium. None of them ever had even 1% of the market.
Laugh now (Score:5, Interesting)
The ARM netbooks and embedded devices are coming and there's nothing Microsoft or Intel can do about it except adapt [zdnetasia.com] and compete [eurotech-inc.com]. The time when you could defeat a good technology with an evangelist is long gone since the public now knows evangelists are just shills for hire. The day a MS rep could derail a Linux deployment with a sneer has passed. Sorry Enderle, your day is done.
Intel will choose to compete and they have a good start because they started years ago. As the Atom die shrinks and gains SOC capabilities, its power requirements will come down. Maybe not to ARM levels, but to an acceptable level faster than ARM can bring their performance up to acceptable levels for a good user experience. Microsoft will choose to use the tools they have, and fail to adapt. That's what they do. They can't grasp a market that's abandoned the need for them. It's alien to their corporate culture. After they've failed in the market they'll buy an ARM OS vendor and try, but that's five years hence. and they'll buy five of them badly and integrate them poorly and we'll laugh at their ineptitude here.
Ultimately Intel will win this one but there will be some interesting side stories and products between now and then. Microsoft will lose because they choose not to port to the interesting new platform Linux runs on already, and so when the channels merge again they will have lost share. By then low power devices might be most of the share, at least for end user devices.
You don't know how this works (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel can shut down AMD's ability to use the X86 technology without giving up the AMD-64 technology if they can show that AMD defaulted on the agreement.
AMD can use the X86 technology and prevent Intel from using the AMD-64 technology if they prevail.
A court is going to have to measure this. The smart money is on a settlement but barring that Intel will win.
Let us meet here again in seven years, when the matter is settled.
Re:Dont see why they need a licence (Score:3, Interesting)
So, by "get steamrolled" I have to assume you mean, license their new patent or whatever allowed them to outcompete you and then get back in the game thereby causing a more rapid improvement?
No, I mean use their massive power of scale to incorporate your innovation (which is licensed at some unknown price set by persons unknown), improve their brand while yours is nonexistent, and figure out how to make the product without paying you fees, all in less time than it takes you to reocup R&D. Or they could steal your idea anyway, but that happens already.
Oh, wait...you meant you fear competition and hope to profit for life off of one halfway decent idea?
Patents are protection from competition for a period of time in exchange for documenting your work. Taking that away hardly makes it appealing.
It's hard to tell what you really mean.
And you seem to have overlooked follow on effects in favor of feel good sentiments.
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering that Acorn were running a multitasking graphical operating system on 25MHz ARM chips, I think you might need revisit your definition of 'real work'. You should also take a closer look at the interrupt architecture of ARM if that's one of the things you believe is superior on x86.
The Cortex A9 scales to four cores on a single die and runs at over 1GHz, while keeping a power envelope of under 1W. If you've only used ARMv4 then you're probably unfamiliar with the NEON instruction set included in most recent ARM chips. This provides 128-bit vector support and both integer and floating-point instructions. The Cortex A8 comes with NEON as standard (it's an optional extension on other ARM7 architecture cores). If you're really doing anything FPU-intensive, however, you should take a look at the on-die DSP that comes on most Cortex A8 chips, such as the OMAP3 or i.MX5 lines.
A modern ARM chips is faster in every respect than the CPU in the old ThinkPad that I still use for real work. It's not as fast as a Core i7 or a POWER6 by any means, but in terms of performance per watt - which translates directly to battery life - it does very well.