Hacker News Reader

What do you want them to do? Create an open alternative? They tried that and failed. Implement thunderbolt? Sorry, that's Intel proprietary, no can do.

It's not just a matter of license fees. AFAICT, Intel won't even let anybody else create chips for cables or peripherals, let alone host chips.

View on HN

Yes because they can't either develop their own controller or say implement the one from say Texas Instruments?

All they need to do is have a TB controller and have a free PCIe interconnect, from looking at say the Promontory chipset (AMD's answer to Intel's PCH) you can just drop it in without sweating.

Thunderbolt controller chips are only made by Intel and AMD is too proud to tell PC vendors to put an Intel chip in every AMD laptop.

What is this for then? http://www.ti.com/ww/en/analog/tps22985_thunderbolt/?DCMP=sc...

Those are little 50-cent chips that sit next to the real Thunderbolt controller (a small grey box in the diagram) which is only made by Intel.

> Implement thunderbolt? Sorry, that's Intel proprietary, no can do.

Sounds like Intel is guilty of "illegal tying". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

On top of that, the DMCA has interoperability clauses which may need to be updated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering

Reply on news.ycombinator.com