AMD tops Nvidia in graphics chip shipments

[energyman]

no. x86 has 4 companies holding licences and at least 5 who are allowed to produce x86 chips. POWER on the other hand - nobody but IBM is to allowed to design or make POWER chips. And Sparc? Oracle, Fujitsu and that was the whole range.

x86 is very non-monopolistic compared to those. And if you want to make a x86 chip you not only have to pay Intel, but AMD, Via and NatSemi to.

[deanjo]

National Semi sold off their x86 lines quite some time ago to Via and AMD.

[energyman]

true, but they still have patents and licences. Nvidia has neither.

[deanjo]

true, but they still have patents and licences. Nvidia has neither.

The patents went with the sales IIRC and the license has expired.

[deanjo]

Also it depends on the features one wants as to who gets a piece of the pie. A x86 chip could only require a license from intel. A x86-64 chip however would require a license as well from AMD. One from Via would only really be required if you desired to implement such additional features like Padlock.

[deanjo]

The other thing to remember as well is many of the patents are coming upon their expiry date. Anything found in a 486 and older has its patents expired already and patents for the pentium and MMX are soon to follow. Patents before June 8 / 1995 have a 17 year limit any thing after that has a 20 year limit.

[energyman]

copyright has no such short term expiration period ... and even if you can make a pentium mmx equivalent - what do you get? Some very slow, very outdated, very power hungry (in terms of performace/watt) CPU.

[deanjo]

copyright has no such short term expiration period ... and even if you can make a pentium mmx equivalent - what do you get? Some very slow, very outdated, very power hungry (in terms of performace/watt) CPU.

WTH does copywrite have to do with it? It's not like they would advertise a x86 chip as a "Pentium".

[energyman]

well, I don't think that you can patent something like SSE2/3/4. But you can have a copyright...

[deanjo]

well, I don't think that you can patent something like SSE2/3/4. But you can have a copyright...

Actually it is the other way around. SSE2/3/4 are instruction sets ion the hardware and are patented, not copywrited. Copywrites apply to written word (or code).