Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, says x86 emulation is a patent minefield • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #54

blazespin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Emulation is only an implementation of the ISA. The x86 ISA is hardly "as great as possible". In fact, it's downright crummy: x86-64 is as bloated as RISC architectures usually are without any of RISC's benefits. At best you can make the argument that x86 has done well in spite of the ISA, not because of it. The silicon-level implementation is another matter entirely, of course--but emulation has nothing to do with t…

"x86-64 is as bloated as RISC architectures usually are without any of RISC's benefits."

Huh? I thought the whole point of a RISC ISA is to not be bloated.

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

#72

Post by _delirium » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #59

This marks a distinct shift for Intel. Historically, Intel's IP approach has focused on trade secrets, because they had a huge advantage in manufacturing and implementation techniques that are not easily reverse-engineered. Patent-protecting x86 didn't make much sense during the long period where nobody could make a general-purpose CPU as fast as Intel running native code, much less while emulating x86. As Moore's la…

That's the opposite of my impression of their history. Intel's approach to x86 historically has been asserting that it's basically impossible to implement a clone due to their patents, which they aggressively asserted to keep any competitors out of the market entirely if possible, and restricted to older ISA features if not possible. With the main exception of AMD, which was initially given patent licenses and tolerated in order to meet 2nd-source requirements. But even AMD they tried to strongarm out of the market later, leading to litigation where AMD eventually won a bunch of continued patent licenses only as part of the lawsuit settlement. Intel has also used patent lawsuits over the past 30 years to attempt to limit competition from Cyrix, Via, NVidia, and Transmeta, among others. Though they did lose or unfavorably settle a number of those lawsuits.

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

#73

Post by tajen » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #63

geon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel has done a lot of work > copying someone's technology and emulating it without paying a license fee You are contradicting yourself. Intel built an instruction set for hardware. Emulating it on an ARM would completely negate the usefulness of it. There is no copying, since the emulator is built on software. The patents concern hardware design, not software. The whole case should be laughable. It shouldn't even…

No. If they're anything like the Itanium ISA patents, then Intel owns the rights to the instructions themselves and their meanings. Emulation would be infringing.

When it's for the matter of compatibility, are patent laws applicable?

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

#74

Post by dboreham » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

ue_ wrote: post #66

bitwize wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If they're anything like the Itanium ISA patents, then Intel owns the rights to the instructions themselves and their meanings. Emulation would be infringing.

I'm a little ignorant on this, but how can you own the rights to instructions? Isn't that the same as owning the rights to an API, or the naming and operation of functions? I mean, would I be infringing if I re-implemented the C standard library, or the standard library of some language with a copyrighted spec? How can you even patent something like that? It goes beyond software patents, as it appears to me. But agai…

We're not talking here about what is right, or even what is correct under the law. We're talking about what a set of lawyers think they can plausibly use to bring an infringement case and not be laughed out of court. A broad spectrum of possibilities.

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

#75

Post by throwaway91111 » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC

kakarot wrote: post #51

amalcon wrote: post #15

Years ago, I spoke with an attorney with a CS background. He had once worked on a case like this. Sharp guy. He didn't tell me the parties involved, and I didn't ask, though I assume he wouldn't speak openly about it while it was ongoing. I therefore don't know how it turned out. It was many years ago, so I might be remembering wrong. I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice (neither mine nor his). Basically, there…

One has to wonder why this approach hasn't been successful in litigation against game console emulator developers.

Possibly because emulators didn't provide a source of potential licensing revenue—they're all free.

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

#76

Post by TD-Linux » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

ue_ wrote: post #66

bitwize wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If they're anything like the Itanium ISA patents, then Intel owns the rights to the instructions themselves and their meanings. Emulation would be infringing.

I'm a little ignorant on this, but how can you own the rights to instructions? Isn't that the same as owning the rights to an API, or the naming and operation of functions? I mean, would I be infringing if I re-implemented the C standard library, or the standard library of some language with a copyrighted spec? How can you even patent something like that? It goes beyond software patents, as it appears to me. But agai…

Patents are entirely unlike copyright in this, in that you can come up with a totally independent implementation, and still infringe the patent. The patents are very similar to audio or video codec patents - for example, they patent the process of executing a particular instruction.

For example, here's Intel's (expired) patent on the CPUID instruction:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5671435A

It claims the particular encoding of the return data. Good luck implementing CPUID in an emulator without infringing.

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

#77

Post by throwaway91111 » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

posterboy wrote: post #30

ikeboy wrote: post #9

> And Intel's business health continues to have a strong dependence on Microsoft's business, which has to make the chip firm a little wary of taking the software company (or its customers) to court. I mean, Apple and Samsung had a billion dollar lawsuit while Samsung chips were still in iPhones. It's certainly precedented to sue a corporation you're actively doing business with.

They had contracts so Samsung was bound and Apple did start using their own chips, so it's not at all certain that the law suit didn't further disturb the business relation.

I believe their chips continue to use samsung fabs today.

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

#78

Post by throwaway91111 » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

my123 wrote: post #58

pgeorgi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Intel uses that for their x86 Android devices - and as far as I know, ARM did not sue.

Intel also makes arm processors (a cortex a5 i think?); perhaps they do license it.

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

#79

Post by dboreham » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

Logically this implies that I can't execute some i386 binary that I possess without infringing Intel patents.

I think this theory of infringement has to run into various thought-experiment problems such as : can I auto-translate that binary into some other instruction set, then execute the translated binary, without infringing Intel patents? (yes, surely) Is the translator now infringing Intel patents because it has to understand their ISA? (no, surely).

Now, can I incorporate that translator into my OS such that it can now execute i386 binaries by translating them to my new instruction set which I can execute either directly or by emulation? If so then I am now not infringing. Or did infringement suddenly manifest because I combined two non-infringing things (translator + emulator for my own translated ISA)?

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

#80

Post by rayiner » Sat, Jun 10, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #72

rayiner wrote: post #59

This marks a distinct shift for Intel. Historically, Intel's IP approach has focused on trade secrets, because they had a huge advantage in manufacturing and implementation techniques that are not easily reverse-engineered. Patent-protecting x86 didn't make much sense during the long period where nobody could make a general-purpose CPU as fast as Intel running native code, much less while emulating x86. As Moore's la…

That's the opposite of my impression of their history. Intel's approach to x86 historically has been asserting that it's basically impossible to implement a clone due to their patents, which they aggressively asserted to keep any competitors out of the market entirely if possible, and restricted to older ISA features if not possible. With the main exception of AMD, which was initially given patent licenses and tolera…

Intel has engaged in some strategic patent litigation over the years, but if you look at the chart in the article, it looks like there has been a big push to get more ISA patents in the last several years.