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Comment by tboerstad | Hacker News Reader

The three licensees would be Intel, AMD and VIA

VIA doesn't have a license for the AMD64 instruction set, however. Intel and AMD did a cross-licensing deal so they have a co-equal position.

Thankfully those patents are about to expire.

The original patents have expired.

The problem with waiting for the patents to expire is you're always stuck 20 years behind.

The ones necessary for x86-64, I mean.

Being 20 years behind isn't a particularly big deal if those 20 years are basically just SSE3, SSE4, AVX.

Which hasn't kept them from building 64-bit cores with everything including AVX-512..

https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/3099/centaur-unveils-its-new-...

IIRC you watch the "Rise of the Centaur" documentary they talk about the Intel lawsuit, and the corresponding counter suit that they won. Which makes the whole thing sound like MAD.

More interesting there is https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/zhaoxin/kaixian

Why doesn't someone like, say, TSMC acquire VIA in a deal where M&A experts do all their jugglery and cunning to make the licensing stay I wonder?

Because TSMC can't compete with their customers and of them is AMD, I believe. TSMC promised not to build their chips, AFAIK, for exactly non-competition reason.

VIA isn't privy to the cross-licensing agreement Intel/AMD signed which gives them full access to the other's technology portfolio (since AMD was a second source foundry for Intel, while Cyrix/VIA was not). However, the Court ruled (when they were still Cyrix) that they are allowed to sell any clean-room designed x86 hardware. So while they don't have access to internal architectural documents, they're allowed to reverse-engineer/duplicate x86.

In some ways, it actually frees them up a bit; as they don't have to reciprocate any efforts with Intel. Which they tried to leverage with their Padlock technology. Unfortunately, their marketshare limits any real practical usage of those benefits.

> they are allowed to sell any clean-room designed x86 hardware

Uuuuh, presumably the case was about patents, right? I don't see how cleanroom-ing is fine with regard to patents.

That case was about patents, but I'm not sure patents are as central here. Right now, there is a patent minescape of mutually assured destruction between everyone. If anyone exercises their patent rights, no one can make anything modern, and the whole industry would come screeching to a halt.

Oddly enough, integrated circuits have their own IP scheme. IP has copyright, patent right, trade secrets, trademarks, and mask works. You rarely learn about mask works, since they're so narrow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_desi...

I think a lot of this would hinge on that corner of the law.

Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/8...

Summary: Cyrix (and subsequently, VIA) have an implied license to Intel's patents; allowing them to develop x86 hardware.

How that differs from AMD: AMD and Intel have a full cross-license on technologies. This means, AMD can utilize Intel resources to integrate AVX-512, a ring-bus, etc (and vice versa). VIA can not. They must develop those technologies independently, in a compatible manner.

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