GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern) (09/12/85)
I have a few comments on the NEC V20 'improved' 8088. The NEC V20 is a CMOS IC that is pin and software compatible superset of the Intel 8088. Aside from the addition of extra instructions (The Z-80 superset in the 8080 CP/M world haunts...), the NEC V20 has a separate ALU to calculate the address, instead of the Intel 8088 having to take extra clock cycles to reuse the 'core' ALU. This WILL give a significant increase in thruput. The Intel 80186 and Intel 80286 also use this separate address ALU. HOPEFULLY, Intel will come out with an 8088 pin compatible 80188. NEC has been producing 8088 CPUs for some time now - AND THEY DO NOT HAVE A LICENSE FROM INTEL TO DO SO (At least the last time I checked). Downright illegal. Even worse, these PIRATE NEC 8088s don't quite work right, the 8087 support is messed up and won't work at all. Do note that AMD, National (I think) ARE Licensed 8088 producers, and a few companies (IBM being one) are licensed to produce 8088s for their own use and products. Now NEC has improved their stolen 8088 (and 8086, the NEC V30) with the address ALU idea from the Intel 8018x. Currently Intel is tring to sue NEC and I hope that they win. I also hope that Intel gets on the ball and properly improves the 8088/8086 with a similar thruput increase. With all the Software anti-piracy discussions going on over these nets, we now have a case of hardware piracy right in front of us. We are tempted to give into it, lay out our $$$, and get the greatly increased processing thruput in return. We would gain, the NEC pirates would gain, and Intel (and all their time and design efforts that made all of our machines possible) would be the losers. I have never liked the quality of NEC ICs, I replaced the NEC 8088 in my Z-100 with an Intel 8088 (8MHz too) as soon as I got it. Later I learned about their 8088 design piracy, and I disliked NEC even more. I rate NEC products right down beside Sanyo (Sell trash cheap, make money off Americans). Not that I have anything against Japanese products, I think Sony is the finest in quality which is why I paid a lot more for my Sony Walkman than all the other brands. I for one am not going to support NEC, or any company that pulls these pirates, no matter what the lower cost or increase in product function. I thought you just might want to know this information. Even still, I wouldn't put a CMOS part in my Z-100 no matter who made it. Flames welcomed. Cheers, Gern [Standard Disclaimer: The views are mine and are generally those of my friends too, but not generally admitted to as those of my employer.] -------
klee@SRI-SPAM.ARPA (Ken Lee) (09/12/85)
Please remember, the only reason NEC can get away with pirating 8088's is that AMERICAN computer manufacturers, like Zenith, are supporting them by buying the things like hotcakes. Don't blame NEC for their capitalist tendencies. The present administration (including the Justice Department) tends to look the other way at American corporate crime. They may come down hard on a Japanese company, though. We will see.
jrv@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (09/13/85)
I'll bet that if Intel wins in court, they'll get punitive damages proportional to the profit NEC has made off the "pirated" parts. Under that assumption, I don't see why one shouldn't buy their parts whether or not one agrees with their policies. (By the way, if Intel chooses to ignore a market as big as the replacement market for all the current 8088s, I think they deserve whatever losses they suffer at the hands of those who choose to pay attention.) - Jim Van Zandt
crl@purdue-newton.arpa (Charles R. LaBrec) (09/14/85)
I haven't really heard many specifics of the NEC V20. Is it really a case of design stealing or just a case of duplicating the 8088 instruction set? If the latter, I'd have no qualms about it. Would someone care to enlighten me? Charles LaBrec crl @ newton.PURDUE.EDU
tweten@AMES-NAS.ARPA (Dave Tweten) (09/14/85)
I recently bought an NEC V20 and installed it in my Z-151, which I am
using to write this message. When I pried the 8088 out from next to my
8087, I noticed that it too had been a NEC part. Contrary to earlier
comments in this forum about NEC 8088s not working with 8087s, it had
worked flawlessly with my 8087 for the previous year.
Preliminary experience is that the V20 speeds up some programs
noticably, and has no effect on others. That is to be expected. If a
program is 8087 limited or I/O limited, speeding up the 8088 will do no
good. It has worked at least as well as the 8088 for any program I
have tried.
The only "negative" effect of the V20 is it causes Zenith's disk-based
diagnostics for CPU-board crystal frequency, and for floppy-disk driver
crystal frequency to fail. I presume the tests compare crystal cycles
against a wait-loop counter. Since the NEC V20 "waits faster" the
tests fail. Sorry, no time yet to do benchmarks.
From: Charles R. LaBrec <crl@Newton.Purdue.EDU>
I haven't really heard many specifics of the NEC V20. Is it
really a case of design stealing or just a case of duplicating
the 8088 instruction set? Would someone care to enlighten me?
I don't presume to be an engineering law expert, but by no strech of my
imagination can I conceive to the V20 being an 8088 carbon copy, either
legal or illegal. The following information was gleened from Intel's
"iAPX 88 BOOK" and from the NEC document titled "V20, uPD70108,
HIGH-PERFORMANCE 16-BIT MICROPROCESSOR, PRELIMINARY INFORMATION", dated
May 1985.
. The time for a register-to-register ADD is quoted as three clocks
for the 8088, two clocks for the V20. NEC's literature claims
that is due to dual 16-bit on-chip busses for the V20, as opposed
to a single bus in the 8088. That supposedly permits two-cycle
register-register instructions (get both operands, return result),
where the 8088 uses three (get one operand, get the other, return
the result). A quick scan through the respective instruction
timing charts indicates that the relationship holds for all
trivial two-register instructions (this obviously doesn't apply to
multiply and divide).
Intel's register-register 16-bit operand, 32-bit result multiply
is quoted at 118-113 clocks. NEC's is quoted as 41-47. The
equivalent divide times are 165-184 cycles for Intel and 38-43 for
NEC. Yes, I too noticed that NEC claims to divide faster than they
multiply, and I can't explain it either.
. NEC claims to use a separate address resolution unit on the chip,
instead of using the arithmetic unit. Their effective address
calculation time is two cycles for any mode. Intel's ranges from
5 to 12, depending on mode.
. The NEC chip has an expanded instruction set. By my estimation,
it includes all the 80186 set plus several more. It has bit-field
insert and extract (perhaps useful in low level graphics?). It
can test and manipulate individual bits in memory. It has packed
decimal string add, subtract and compare. It has a BCD digit
rotate instruction. Those are the highlights (as I see them);
there are several more instructions I haven't mentioned. There is
also a complete 8080 emulation mode which interests me not at
all.
In summary, it appears to me that if the V20 is a "pirate" 8088, then
the Z-80 was a "pirate" 8080. Is our chauvinism showing?bmw@aesat.UUCP (Bruce Walker) (09/16/85)
In article <1438@brl-tgr.ARPA> GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern) writes: > > I have a few comments on the NEC V20 'improved' 8088. And I have a few comments about these comments. [stuff removed...] > NEC has been producing 8088 CPUs for some time now - AND THEY DO NOT > HAVE A LICENSE FROM INTEL TO DO SO (At least the last time I checked). > Downright illegal. [...] > Currently Intel is tring to sue > NEC and I hope that they win. [...] > With all the Software anti-piracy discussions going on over these nets, > we now have a case of hardware piracy right in front of us. [...] > I have never liked the quality of NEC ICs, I replaced the NEC 8088 in > my Z-100 with an Intel 8088 (8MHz too) as soon as I got it. Later > I learned about their 8088 design piracy, and I disliked NEC even more. > I rate NEC products right down beside Sanyo (Sell trash cheap, make money > off Americans). > > I for one am not going to support NEC, or any company that pulls these > pirates, no matter what the lower cost or increase in product function. > I thought you just might want to know this information. > > Even still, I wouldn't put a CMOS part in my Z-100 no matter who made it. > > Flames welcomed. The truth of this business is that everybody copies everybody else, either illicitly or licitly. When you took out your immoral NEC 8088 I hope you also took out your NEC uPD765A floppy disk controller. Oh, OH!! Don't try to replace it with an Intel i8272. Sorry, that is a "second source" of the NEC part. NEC, who designs "cheap trash", designed that part and Intel liked it so much they make them too. IBM liked it so much they designed it in and sell 100K's of them. Give me more of this "cheap trash". How many other parts in your computer are copies of the original? What about the computer itself? Did Heath/Zenith ask permission of IBM to blatantly steal the architectural designs of the IBM PC and build a "clone"? Hmmmm? The remark about CMOS borders on non-sequiter. What the hell would a CMOS IC do to your Z100? Has CMOS got AIDS or something? Seriously, have you got a real-time clock in your Z100? If so, then you've got CMOS (oh no! :-) It's pretty hard to get along without that particular technology. Bruce Walker {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!aesat!bmw "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has a limit." - anonymous button
spp@ucbvax.ARPA (Stephen P Pope) (09/17/85)
Gern,
You are fairly confused on the issues of chip pirating.
It would be illegal for NEC to have used the copyrighted
mask set, or the same tooling that that Intel uses in some
other form, to produce its "pirate" 8088's. It would
be illegal for NEC to sell 8088's that were designed with
the use of stolen or proprietary information. But it
has never been alleged that NEC has done any of these things.
What they have done is reproduce the 8088 starting from
its data-sheet, and other public-domain information, and
this is perfectly legal. Of course as you pointed out
it doesn't work quite right and that is a valid complaint.
But it's not an illegal chip.
AMD and other liscensed producers of 8088 chips use
mask sets obtained from Intel, and that is the reason
they need to be licensed. They never designed the chip,
they only manufacture it, so far as I know.
The fact that NEC 8088's don't behave the same as
intel's is some evidence that they probably didn't
steal the design.
As another example, do you think that the first outfit
to produce, say, a 64K RAM chip forever has the right
to enjoin others from doing the same? Of course not!
Anybody who goes to the trouble to design such a
device from its specifications, without violating
copyrights and proprietary arrangements, has the
right to produce it free and clear. Microprocessors
are no different.
As for the microcode-stealing issue, that is another
story.
steve pope (ucbvax!spp)
disclaimer: I'm not an attorney, and even if I were,
I'd never admit to it on the nethenry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (09/17/85)
> NEC has been producing 8088 CPUs for some time now - AND THEY DO NOT > HAVE A LICENSE FROM INTEL TO DO SO (At least the last time I checked). > Downright illegal... Nonsense. It's no more illegal than Toyota building cars without getting permission from Ford. Intel has no property rights in what an 8088 looks like to the outside world, unless there are patents involved (which I doubt). Nor do they have any property rights in the name "8088". The legal squabble is over whether copying the *insides* is legitimate. You don't need to copy the insides of the Intel 8088 to build an 8088. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern) (09/18/85)
The problem is that I have seen a lot of cases (some involving NEC) in which you take a 'legal' chip and camouflage it making it very difficult to determine that this was a pirate design and not a redesign. A software example is simply to do a global change of each variable name, move the subroutines all around, renumber the program, and then just to make sure, modify on your own the main part of the program, along with any other short-cuts and/or improvements you happen to see along the way. I believe a recent issue of IEEE Spectrum covered such things. There were several examples shown, one of which was a magnification of two completely different looking chips, with the same function. They did not even look close to each other, but after the artical told you what to look for, they were identical in every way. The problem is, it is difficult to prove it, get it to court, especially between an American company and a non-American one, and get people to believe it. I wish I could go into some juicy specifics, but... The opinions expressed are that of my own and usually that of my friends too, and may or may not be those of the USAF which won't tell, but will get on my case if I say anything more. Cheers, Gern -------
timothym@tekigm.UUCP (Timothy D Margeson) (09/19/85)
Summary: My comments on NEC's actions re. V20/30 uP's.
Expires:
References: <1439@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Sender:
Reply-To: timothym@tekigm2 D Margeson.UUCP (Timothy D Margeson)
Followup-To: The ongoing discussion of Intel vs. NEC
Distribution: net.micro.pc
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Keywords: NEC, V20, V30, Copyright
[Grrrrr....DON'T TOUCH THIS LINE!]
{Just a short apology if this reached the net twice.}
{Postnews has been sick lately.}
About NEC and Intel.
Although I do not condone the current piracy of Intels 8088 and 8086
products, I cannot find fault with taking those same products, doing
various modifications to their current designs to improve them, and
then marketing the final *new* product.
If this tactic is illegal, then why hasn't Ford sued General Motors
for stealing their idea of a car? And no, I do not think that I am
comparing apples to oranges. Within the electronics industry one can
find several examples of this same *piracy* (I use the term loosely)
if one considers the TTL family of products. If you were to look at
the masks of several different vendors parts, I am certain you will
find many duplications. Does this mean every *original* designer is
within his legal rights to sue all of the remaining companies? I am
content to think not.
If NEC has taken photocopies of Intels masks, duplicated them, and
sold the parts from those masks, copyright infringement has taken
place, as well as possible patent infringements. This is not the
case with the V20 and V30 devices.
I have purchased the NEC V30 microprocessor for my Compaq Deskpro. I
do not feel that buying a better product is in support of pirates.
If Intel were offering the indentical part, with identical speed and
throughput, I would feel differently. They are not, so it is not a
case of piracy, it is a case of a better product for sale in an open
market.
For the record, these are my opinions, and not the opinions of my
employer, Tektronix, Inc., and I make no other claims or statements-
regarding the accuracy or content of this message.
--
Tim Margeson (206)253-5240
tektronix!tekigm!timothym @@ 'Who said that?'
PO Box 3500 d/s C1-465
Vancouver, WA. 98665phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (09/19/85)
In article <10406@ucbvax.ARPA> spp@ucbvax.ARPA (Stephen P Pope) writes: >other form, to produce its "pirate" 8088's. It would >be illegal for NEC to sell 8088's that were designed with >the use of stolen or proprietary information. But it >has never been alleged that NEC has done any of these things. >What they have done is reproduce the 8088 starting from >its data-sheet, and other public-domain information, and >this is perfectly legal. I was told the following story at a party so I can't really back it up without a lot of work but it may be interesting anyway: Apparently Intel had a microcode bug in the 8088 which they needed to fix in a big hurry. So they edited the mask and changed the bits in a place where they normally wouldn't be changed, overriding the normal layer where microcode was stored. They were pursuing a suit against NEC when it was discovered that the NEC 8088 had the same kludge microcode patch. When this was disclosed in the newspaper (Wall Street Journal or Washington Post, wish I could remember which and when), NEC suddenly agreed to settle out of court and gave Intel everything they wanted (some large sum of money). If this story is true then: 1) It has been alleged that NEC has done illegal things like copy masks. 2) A rather convincing proof is present in NEC's willingness to settle at a high cost to themselves. Again, I'm only speaking for myself. -- We changed Coke again. hee hee Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720 UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.ARPA
GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern) (09/19/85)
Answers to your questions: No, I do not have a NEC floppy disk controller. The Z-100 (a completely different, orginal design machine and far superior to the IBM/Clones) uses a Western Digital 1797. IBM liked the NEC because it was CHEAP. Yes, I have several friends that work at IBM that know these things as well as friends in the Reliablity Division here (we are a USAF research and development lab) that would have all sorts of nasty things to say about NEC chips, if only they were allowed to say such things. A just posted message has just confirmed (at least a rumor) that NEC did indeed pirate the Intel 8088, right down to the early design mistake in Intel's microcode (I did not think that the 8088 was a microcoded CPU?). Yes, I have a CMOS real-time clock calendar with auto-leap year in a device of my own design. Working/interfacing with CMOS is a pain DON'T TOUCH IT - IT DIES and the incompatible logic levels (pull-up, pull-up...) and the slow speeds. The very low power consumption makes CMOS ideal for battery backup/battery powered applications such as battery backup clock-calendar chips and the DG/One lap computer. Sticking a CMOS CPU in a mostly TTL machine, especially in a borderline spec designed machine such as the real IBM, may case line driving problems. Also the IBM design (again) is well known for its internal heat problems and CMOS ICs age very rapidly as heat increases, much more so than NMOS or TTL (in that order). SO it may work now, but maybe not a couple of years from now. CMOS ICs that are ALMOST TTL level/ TTL drive level/TTL speed level do so at a large increase in power consumption. Granded, not as much as TTL, but the future is not CMOS for high speed operations. The inherent properties of CMOS greatly limit its speed. And I still hope Intel wins... Cheers, Gern [The randoms in the message are my own opinions and usually that of my friends and other sane persons too and may or may not be those of the USAF, which won't tell] -------
agn@k.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA (Andreas Nowatzyk) (09/20/85)
In article <1603@brl-tgr.ARPA> GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern) writes: > >... Granded, not as much as TTL, but the future is not >CMOS for high speed operations. The inherent properties of CMOS >greatly limit its speed. > This statement bears little relation to reality. As the feature size of VLSI circuts becomes smaller and circuits grow larger, NMOS dies a heat death. CMOS has a bright future *because* of its inherent properties, which do not greatly limit the speed: * CMOS gate arrays can operate at sub-nano sec gate delays * The CMOS 68020 micro is the fastest one around * ETA (a CDC spinnoff) is building the GF10 supercomputer (10 Giga FLOPS) in CMOS (the higher logic density compensates for slightly higher gate delays). * Some of the new 1Mbit DRAMS are CMOS (60 nsec Tac) -- Andreas Usenet: ...!seismo!k.cs.cmu.edu!agn -- -- Andreas Arpa-net: agn@cmu-cs-k.ARPA uucp-net: ...!seismo!cmu-cs-k!agn
GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern) (09/20/85)
Bipolar is the only way to go for speed. The industry is spending too much effort trying to make CMOS better/faster in the quest for better thruput. CMOS is the way to go for low power applications and is an advantage only in circuits where most of the silicon is idle much of the time. In wafer-scale integration, heat disssipation becomes the limiting factor. A 4" wafer can dissipate about 100 Watts free air, with full use of the silicon, it will have a capacitance to ground of 3uF. Under these conditions CMOS tops out around 6MHz, NMOS at 17MHz and Bipolar's high transconductance and high speed-power product tops out at 340MHz. If industry insists on staying with CMOS technology and not working on bipolar, we are not going to have the fantastic computing power (better than Cray II) that we need and are capable of. Cheers, Gern P.S. - Anyhow, I don't like any IC technology that you can't pick up with your bare hands while standing on a soft carpet. (-: -------
Andreas.Nowatzyk@K.CS.CMU.EDU (09/22/85)
Sorry to say that, but I think you should do some research on the physics involwed here. a) Trilogy failed badly when they attempted Wafer Scale Integration (WSI). They were putting a mere 60K gates on a wafer (in ECL bipolar) and it dissapates 1000W (that's right one Kilowatt!). Their gates wre only marginally faster than current CMOS gates (0.7 ns is not uncommon). In addition, CMOS has much nicer driving properties when it comes to long wires on the chip, has a better noise margin etc. As a data point: ETA uses 20K gate CMOS arrays, 2 of them form a ALU that outperforms the one used in Cyber's 205 supercomputer. b) Companies are not pushing CMOS because it is fashionable, but because it is the only promissing way to achive high logic desities *and* high speeds. This is obvious if you look at the scaling properties of various tecnology. BTW: The GF10 outperforms a Cray any time. You shouldn't not fool yourself with memories of RCA's CA4000 series: that is history. One last point: Static sensitivity - guess which technolgy is more prone to fail due to static electricity? Properly protected CMOS or high desnsity ECL? The answer is not obvious. Remember that the VAX 8600 had servere problems here (a bipolar ECL machine). The assembly line is now a strict anti-static environement and every cabinet comes with built in grounding clips for the field service! Cheers -- Andreas
GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern) (09/23/85)
Physics has never been one of my strong points... There is a lot of work going on in a lot of areas with newer approaches and ideas, and things are not always as they would seem. Wish I could say more. Cheers, Gern -------