BILLW@SU-SCORE.ARPA (William Chops Westfield) (09/14/85)
>From: tweten@AMES-NAS.ARPA (Dave Tweten) > : > : >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. Does Intel claim the the V20 is a ripoff of the 8088, or a ripoff of the 80188? I think that the 80186 familly includes many improvments "similar" to those included in the NEC v20. Legally, there is the question of whether microcode CAN be copyrigthed (I would say yes), and whether Intel's microcode WAS copyrighted (I doubt it. I don't think anyone copyrights their microcode - It is normally too dependent on the underlying hardware to matter). Regardless of whether it was illegal, Im pretty sure we all agree that NEC was immoral if indeed they actually stole the microcode. > : > : > . 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. This sound misleading - Don't the quoted Intel timings include the time needed to fetch the offsets (if any) from the instruction steam? A more realistic comparison is probably V20: 2-10 cycles, 8088: 5 to 16 cycles (adding the extra 4 cycle for word offsets in 8 bit buses). Does anyone know if stack operations and interupt response is improved? > : >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? Somewhat. There is certainly a tradition for getting mad at companies who reproduce your products, foriegn or not. DEC sued (and lost) Foonly over the implementation of PDP10 sytle byte operations, for example. BillW -------
kds@intelca.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker) (09/17/85)
> Legally, there is the question of whether microcode CAN be copyrigthed > (I would say yes), and whether Intel's microcode WAS copyrighted (I > doubt it. I don't think anyone copyrights their microcode - It is well something in there is marked copyrighted! Practically every Intel chip I have seen has a copyright notice on both the package and on the chip itself (don't believe me? Pop the lid off the 8088s you replace in your PCs with V20s! The 8086 pen plot I just looked at explicitly says that the microcode is copyrighted in the metal layer, certainly in clear view of anyone that would try to reverse engineer it.) That microcode is copyrightable has, I believe, passed the test in the courts. -- ...and I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody outside of a small circle of friends... Ken Shoemaker, Microprocessor Design for a large, Silicon Valley firm {pur-ee,hplabs,amd,scgvaxd,dual,qantel}!intelca!kds ---the above views are personal. They may not represent those of the employer of its submitter.
jbn@wdl1.UUCP (09/18/85)
DEC has been very active on the litigation front lately; they were even suing somebody who makes a VT100 clone, claiming that they had rights to the VT100's keyboard layout, cabinet shape, etc. I don't know if they won; it seems unlikely. John Nagle