Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 234 posts

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#41

Post by rhaps0dy »

std_throwaway wrote: post #40
Deinos wrote: post #23

The article mentions Cyrix as a "victim" of Intel patent defense; however, Cyrix not only won their lawsuits, but they also went after Intel for patent violations in the Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/84...

You can win a lawsuit and still lose so much time and money on the way that you are worse off afterwards. Vice versa you can cause your opponents so much trouble with lawsuits that - even though you don't win them - you are better off than them afterwards.

But Microsoft is bigger than Intel. So if anything, they will cause trouble to Intel.

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#42

Post by deepnotderp »

zeta0134 wrote: post #19
make3 wrote: post #4

How did I not already know Microsoft had a working x86 emulator.. this is a massive game changer for the laptop space if it's fast and reliable enough, as afaik ARM chips are so much more power efficient for similar perf

There are several existing and excellent x86 emulators floating around. In the open source space, QEMU is quite fantastic and well supported. I'm not surprised at all that Microsoft managed to either develop one in house, or acquire one. x86 is an old and very well understood architecture at this point. The difficulty thus isn't in writing a working emulator, it's in figuring out which features you can support from a…

Not to be pedantic, but x86 is simply an ISA, not necessarily the microarchitecture.

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#43

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

Deinos wrote: post #23

The article mentions Cyrix as a "victim" of Intel patent defense; however, Cyrix not only won their lawsuits, but they also went after Intel for patent violations in the Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/84...

"If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined", as someone once remarked.

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#45

Post by pgeorgi »

AstralStorm wrote: post #10

So they will ban all virtual machines which sometimes have to go for emulation, e.g. to handle XSAVE? Scorched earth policy will likely not be defensible under fair use law. Reverse engineering for compatibility has a few precedents.

Patents may be selectively enforced, there's no forfeiture as there is with trademarks.

Intel had (and has) no issue with qemu or bochs emulating everything, as long as they were niche and/or promoting the Intel platform (and grudgingly accepting compatibles).

However a move to rid Microsoft's platform from Intel altogether without compromising compatibility is something worth fighting for. I heard that ARM is rather similar in that aspect: emulators for development are a-ok, but trying to run ARM emulation on a consumer product with no ARM components inside will drive up the legal fees until some licensing agreement is set up.

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#46

Post by emmab »

blazespin wrote: post #28
amorphid wrote: post #26

Attorneys on both sides must be excited on some level about the potential number of billable hours it'd take to litigate a case like this. Reminds me of a something an entrepreneurship professor told me... If there's one lawyer in town, they drive a Chevrolet. If there are two lawyers in town, they both drive Cadillacs.

To be fair Intel has done a lot of work to make the x86 as great as possible. Patent lawsuits are awful. I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either. My guess is this is all just negotiation from Microsoft's point of view and they are just trying to get Intel to license the ability to emulate x86. Another possibility is this is a way to get Int…

> I'm not sure just copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee is all that great either.

And yet vendor-lockin is not good for competition. Is the increased incentive for research investment due to patents worth more to humanity than the resulting vendor-lockin that makes it harder to switch to AMD?

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#47

Post by Deinos »

std_throwaway wrote: post #40
Deinos wrote: post #23

The article mentions Cyrix as a "victim" of Intel patent defense; however, Cyrix not only won their lawsuits, but they also went after Intel for patent violations in the Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/84...

You can win a lawsuit and still lose so much time and money on the way that you are worse off afterwards. Vice versa you can cause your opponents so much trouble with lawsuits that - even though you don't win them - you are better off than them afterwards.

Very true. Often a larger actor with even larger pockets can turn a winnable battle into a losing war of attrition.

In this case, it appears that Cyrix came out on the other side of the battle in a better position for their win. It would seem it was their later acquisition by National Semiconductor that eventually snuffed them out.

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#48

Post by TeMPOraL »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #41
std_throwaway wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can win a lawsuit and still lose so much time and money on the way that you are worse off afterwards. Vice versa you can cause your opponents so much trouble with lawsuits that - even though you don't win them - you are better off than them afterwards.

But Microsoft is bigger than Intel. So if anything, they will cause trouble to Intel.

It's not just about direct litigation costs. If they could e.g. block a major product release, the damage becomes much greater.

Re: Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield

#49

Post by std_throwaway »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #41
std_throwaway wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can win a lawsuit and still lose so much time and money on the way that you are worse off afterwards. Vice versa you can cause your opponents so much trouble with lawsuits that - even though you don't win them - you are better off than them afterwards.

But Microsoft is bigger than Intel. So if anything, they will cause trouble to Intel.

Both can afford to spend hundreds of millions on a lawsuit. The lawsuit will be only a part of the budget for both and non-existential. So I don't think that the size matters here.

It would be different if the lawsuit is so expensive that one party could go bankrupt due to it.

This isn't about right and wrong. It's about money. Who has to pay how much to the other party? Both parties think they are better off if they fight. Both parties think they could win money in the end. It's a gamble in the courtroom.

Post reply on HN