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Intel Hints at Patent Fight With Microsoft and Qualcomm Over x86 Emulation

posted by on Saturday June 10 2017, @04:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the patently-ridiculous dept.

takyon writes:

Intel may be planning to sue Microsoft for its plans to include x86 emulation in Windows 10 for ARM machines:

In celebrating the x86 architecture's 39th birthday yesterday—the 8086 processor first came to market on June 8, 1978—Intel took the rather uncelebratory step of threatening any company working on x86 emulator technology.

[...] The post doesn't name any names, but it's not too hard to figure out who it's likely to be aimed at: Microsoft, perhaps with a hint of Qualcomm. Later in the year, companies including Asus, HP, and Lenovo will be releasing Windows laptops using Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 processor. This is not the first time that Windows has been released on ARM processors—Microsoft's first attempt to bring Windows to ARM was the ill-fated Windows 8-era Windows RT in 2012—but this time around there's a key difference. Windows RT systems could not run any x86 applications. Windows 10 for ARM machines, however, will include a software-based x86 emulator that will provide compatibility with most or all 32-bit x86 applications.

This compatibility makes these ARM-based machines a threat to Intel in a way that Windows RT never was; if WinARM can run Wintel software but still offer lower prices, better battery life, lower weight, or similar, Intel's dominance of the laptop space is no longer assured. The implication of Intel's post is that the chip giant isn't just going to be relying on technology to secure its position in this space, but the legal system, too.

Also at ZDNet and CRN.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @05:51PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @05:51PM (#523529)

    They don't fall under 10+10 patents?
    If so you're looking at 2020 before 2000 era patents qualify, which is pre Pentium 4.

    That means no SSE2+, NX, AVX, VMX, x86_64, no 180nm process tech, no IPC improvements from the past 20 years, etc.

    Obviously *SOME* of them might actually be unpatentable/overturnable thanks to prior art, but the majority of these there is at least one patent they can swat you with. Having said that, Intel's relevance in the market is fading, even if it isn't obvious to the business community/stock market yet. SoftBank is looking more and more like the heir apparent to the technological throne. Owner of the ARM IP, Owner of Boston Dynamics and other robot/manufacturing technology. Internet/Telecommunications master. Financial supporter of many anime (and even a few MMOs?) They have their hands in almost everything tech nowadays, but unlike Intel they don't seem to be flailling about with their purchases. They are systematically buying up specific companies in specific markets that are both undervalued for their potential and capable of much more given the proper corporate support and guidance (IE taking boston dynamics' designs and actually producing some field prototypes... rad-hardened for use in Fukashima Daiichi, for instance.)

    Having said all this, from a consumer perspective the greatest benefit to come from this would be a non-profit organization devoted to producing RISC-V chips with user friendly features, like wholly device owner controlled TPM/TrustZone/ME implementation that allows the user to input keys (whether into efuses inside the CPU, efuses outside the cpu in a seperate package, or simply loaded from flash during bios initialization, with physical write protection to ensure it stays disabled... Which BTW is dangerous on SPI flash, where the write disable pin only works if the flash has write-disable *ENABLED* in software after poweron! Meaning glitching could exploit and allow a write to flash even when you believe yourself protected by a read-only behavior! Unlikely to happen in practice, but impossible to ensure without architectural changes!)

  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 10 2017, @06:17PM (3 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday June 10 2017, @06:17PM (#523537) Homepage

    As an employee of Boston Dynamics who was working there throughout the selloff to SoftBank, I can state that there was a good reason why Google sold off Boston Dynamics -- because nobody in their right mind would buy any of Boston Dynamics' inefficient rube-Goldberg contraptions and all the worth is in the IP.

    We are understandably demoralized, as the new management SoftBank put in love to torment us. For example, since a few employees suffered repetitive-motion injuries, group stretches are now mandatory twice a day and I've already been reprimanded for saying, "This is bullshit," and walking out of a group stretch session.

    Then during our all-hands meetings, the new management started enforcing "team-building exercises" -- and again, we are forced to perform such humiliating acts as playing pin the tail on the Donkey under threat of reprimand and poor performance reviews, although I managed to weasel out of that idiocy by showing up a few minutes late and eating my dish of catered food really slow.

    I'm usually the kind of guy who likes to wait around until I get laid off, so I can collect, but Boston Dynamics has become so terrible that I've already lined up some extra work and am bailing. Had some good times there, though, like that time I caught Sergei Brin and Eric Schmidt stealing our inventories of expensive gold-plated pins and trying to melt them into ingots using one of our blowtorches. They might be smart guys, but they need a crash-course in metallurgy and inventory management.