Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#51

Post by kumarm » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

devit wrote: post #21

Looks like the "idea" of the patent in the description is to use a predictor to predict when a STORE and LOAD alias and not speculate the LOAD and any instruction depending on the load (although the claims generalize this to any non-static dependency). As it generally happens in software/hardware patents, the claimed solution seems quite obvious whenever one wants to solve that particular problem, and the hard part i…

The patent is at least more innovative than Slide to Unlock. If you encourage crappy patents, they are gonna bite you some day.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#52

Post by drzaiusapelord » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

abluecloud wrote: post #2

$862m isn't that huge in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention, it's most likely not going to be $862m, my guess is it'll be less.

>$862m isn't that huge in the grand scheme of things.

Well, it normalizes large patent payment damages which isn't good and guarantees that non-giant companies will never, ever be able to compete in this space because investors are spooked over random near $1b lawsuits.

Big companies seem to not mind the patent status quo for some reason. I suspect it just keeps competition away by raising the barrier to entry. This should be concerning to all. The refrain of "Apple can afford it" is scary as Apple is the world's wealthiest company. Of course they can afford it. That's besides the point.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#53

Post by rayiner » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

mzs wrote: post #41

rayiner wrote: post #29

This PDF explains what I discuss below in more detail: http://moodle.technion.ac.il/pluginfile.php/315285/mod_resou... . Prediction of aliasing is discussed on slide 25. The patent in question pertains to an optimization of what these days you'd call "memory disambiguation." In a processor executing instructions out of order, data dependencies can be known or ambiguous. A known data dependency is, for example, summin…

Alpha 21264 (also from '96) had load store buffers that would notice the dependence violations and flush the pipeline during speculative execution. Sparc and power also had this to some extent with write buffers. I can't think of any that used a predictor though to decide whether to execute speculatively or not back then, they all just either did or stalled on the first potential violation. The patent appears novel f…

DEC was working on it, allegedly for EV8: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis501/papers/store-sets.pdf. They cite to the inventor of the patent in question: "Independently, Moshovos et al. published a comprehensive description of memory dependence prediction. This is the first published work identifying that memory dependencies are problematic for out-of-order machines."

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#54

Post by JamesMcMinn » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:39 PM UTC

monochromatic wrote: post #31

How is this journalism? It doesn't even tell you the damn patent number.

The portion of the BBCs audience who actually want to know the patent number is tiny, and the portion who would actually understand the patent itself is a tiny fraction of those, so why include it? Those who are interested can go out and find it themselves without much difficulty.

The job of a journalist isn't report every fact, it's to cut through the noise, take something that happened and condense it into something that their audience will read and can understand, without distorting it.

This article does exactly that. That's why it's journalism.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#55

Post by wmf » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

Kristine1975 wrote: post #47

>The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer. How can it be that the research of this university isn't in the public domain? The public paid for it, the public should reap the benefits without paying again. Sure, Apple tries their hardest not to pay taxes, but the patent isn't limited to them.

I guess the university can provide better services[1] to the public if it's profitable.

[1] Like an NFL-class stadium.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#56

Post by monochromatic » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

JamesMcMinn wrote: post #54

monochromatic wrote: post #31

How is this journalism? It doesn't even tell you the damn patent number.

The portion of the BBCs audience who actually want to know the patent number is tiny, and the portion who would actually understand the patent itself is a tiny fraction of those, so why include it? Those who are interested can go out and find it themselves without much difficulty. The job of a journalist isn't report every fact, it's to cut through the noise, take something that happened and condense it into somethin…

For the information content, this article could have been two sentences long.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#57

Post by bpodgursky » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

Kristine1975 wrote: post #47

>The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer. How can it be that the research of this university isn't in the public domain? The public paid for it, the public should reap the benefits without paying again. Sure, Apple tries their hardest not to pay taxes, but the patent isn't limited to them.

> So it's a university [mainly] funded by the tax-payer

This is not true, at least for most states. For example, the UW system got 1.2 Billion from the state out of a 6 Billion dollar budget: https://www.wisconsin.edu/about-the-uw-system/

The large majority of most state university funding comes through tuition, research grants, and donations.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#58

Post by baldfat » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #50

roc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, patents aren't granted for ideas, but for specific executions. Granted, the execution is generally defined at a higher level than, say, "this exact chunk of silicon". But it's at a much lower level than the "idea".

When it comes to digital technology patents are often granted for ideas or concepts so general as to be ridiculous. Whether those patents stand up in court is another thing but even there -- as in this case -- there are no guarantees of sanity. I hope Apple will appeal.

The more general and broad the patent the more valuable it is. The system rewards big general patents.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#59

Post by msravi » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

UWisc has always been very aggressive with its patents. I recall sometime during 2002 or thereabouts, while working for a reasonably big semiconductor company with DSP/ARM processors, one of the guys in our team with an interest in computer architecture, used the company network to download and play with a simulator or something (might have been simplescalar). A few weeks later the head of our group gets contacted by the company lawyers saying that UWisc was asking for licensing costs for using their tools (they provided the ip address that was used to download the tools). I'm not sure how it was resolved finally, but I don't think the company paid.

Re: Apple facing huge chip patent bill after losing case

#60

Post by DannoHung » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

I have one question: Do the professors teach this technique in classes?

I mean, that'd be funny, right? Teaching students something that you patented, waiting a few years for them to go into industry and apply what they learned, then suing them for it.