Sony Raids Hacker's Home; Hacker Shares All Known HV Info

[NeoTrunks]

Anyone else? Nah, you're screwed.

IBM/Cyrix come to mind from back in the day. I am sure VIA is also making their own x86 based chipsets. There are probably countless others that you or I haven't even heard of.

[Athernar]

IBM/Cyrix come to mind from back in the day. I am sure VIA is also making their own x86 based chipsets. There are probably countless others that you or I haven't even heard of.

And where are their competing product lines? How many x86 licenses has Intel negotiated in the last few years? Fact of the matter is, x86 isn't open by any stretch of the word; if it was, we would have at least three different brands of CPU to choose from when we spec out our new PCs.

[HawkMan]

AMD hold a license to x86 granted to them by Intel at a time where AMD only essentially made cheap replicas, AMD's success with the Athlon 64 gave them enough leeway to force Intel to take up AMD64 over IA-64. Anyone else? Nah, you're screwed.

If the PC platform was really as open as you say it is, then nVidia would of entered the CPU market a long time ago now. So yes, they have been keeping it to themselves; otherwise x86 would be an open standard.

you need to read up on your actual CPU history. you have some (very few) facts right, and some very wrong and a lot of factoids.

Intel and AMD had a cross licensing deal. intel had to give AMD all their x86 licenses (simplifed, but basically). this is also the only reason why intel is using A64(x64). because it was a cross licensing, intel had to share all their licenses and AMD had to share all theirs.

and no, not everyone can just make x86 chipsets, they need to be licensed, which isn't entirely straight forward, especially since x86 isn't just x86. This is also why all other x86 implementations sucks. they are weak copies and they miss a lot of what modern intel and AMD cpu's have added to the x86 instruction set.

[NeoTrunks]

And where are their competing product lines? How many x86 licenses has Intel negotiated in the last few years? Fact of the matter is, x86 isn't open by any stretch of the word; if it was, we would have at least three different brands of CPU to choose from when we spec out our new PCs.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/

IBM is out of the consumer sector now, as far as I know.

It's open enough that if you wanted to develop your own x86 based processor, it wouldn't be impossible to do. You're arguing semantics.

This is also far off topic.

[Athernar]

you need to read up on your actual CPU history. you have some (very few) facts right, and some very wrong and a lot of factoids.

Intel and AMD had a cross licensing deal. intel had to give AMD all their x86 licenses (simplifed, but basically). this is also the only reason why intel is using A64(x64). because it was a cross licensing, intel had to share all their licenses and AMD had to share all theirs.

and no, not everyone can just make x86 chipsets, they need to be licensed, which isn't entirely straight forward, especially since x86 isn't just x86. This is also why all other x86 implementations sucks. they are weak copies and they miss a lot of what modern intel and AMD cpu's have added to the x86 instruction set.

Uh, you just echoed what I said? AMD had a license to x86 (At the time circa 2001), Intel slowly tries to push the incompatible IA-64 as a eventual replacement, AMD develops AMD64 aka x86-64 or EM64T and grabs the market; Intel licenses AMD64 creating a new cross-licensing MAD situation. I'm pretty sure the 2001 agreement had no bearing on future developments.

Ultimately CPU history is irrelevant, all that matters is that x86 is closed and proprietary, which you indicated nicely.

And yes, this is off topic. (Quickly; Those VIA chips aren't really in the consumer segment either)

[HawkMan]

Uh, you just echoed what I said? AMD had a license to x86 (At the time circa 2001), Intel slowly tries to push the incompatible IA-64 as a eventual replacement, AMD develops AMD64 aka x86-64 or EM64T and grabs the market; Intel licenses AMD64 creating a new cross-licensing MAD situation. I'm pretty sure the 2001 agreement had no bearing on future developments.

Ultimately CPU history is irrelevant, all that matters is that x86 is closed and proprietary, which you indicated nicely.

And yes, this is off topic. (Quickly; Those VIA chips aren't really in the consumer segment either)

revisioning again.

IE64 was NEVER a replacement for x86. it was a server based pure 64 bit architecture, and Intel repeatedly said they would never use it for consumers.

And intel never needed to license A64, when AMD made it, intel effectively already had a license to it.

in fact the long time scale of everything that happened makes your story fall in on itself.

If A64 happened right after IA64, and A64 was on the market for a logn time and AMD was actually taking a large chunk of the market threatening intels position before intel adopted it, then yes yoru story would have merit, but non of that is what happened.

- AMD makes unlincensed x86 cpu's

- Intel uses legal power to force AMD to license x86, due to intels dominance they manage to slap on a cross license deal that means for amd to license x86, Intel will automatically be given license to use past and future AMD technology (I think it's expired by now)

- Intel makes IA64 for the server and high end workstation market. low adoption in workstatiosn due to being pure 64 and little available software. intel has no interest in mass market adoption of 64 bit at all, much less pure i64

- many years later, AMD makes the A64 extension. A64 has slow adoption among the high end tech crowd, the OS support is lacking and software is lacking even more. the technology is recognized as being a great option for home adoption of 64 bit, as it's essentially 32 and 64 bit.

- intel releases their x64 version of A64. again these where even in development before A64 was released to the public which is why intel could release them so (relatively)shortly after AMD. due to cross licensing intel already had the license to use this tech and there was no new cross licensing written. Intel was no threatened by the slow adoption of AMD's A64 cpu's

in fact adoption of 64 was still slow after this, and only picked up because all CPU's eventually because A64/x64. and even then the 64 bit OS adoption was low and few actually used the 64 bit extention. only today with 7 and the last year of vista before 7, are we seeing higher adoption into A64/x64

(Quickly; Those VIA chips aren't really in the consumer segment either)

actually VIA developed their latest x86 chipsets specifically for consumer usage, more specifically the low power low performance segment. the one that Atom took over and killed the competition in.

[Memphis]

I own the software on MY PS3. {As stated before I have an xbox, but I don't recommending adding neon lights, it didn't turn out so well).

The Duke is absolutely right here, you do not own the software at all.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

The Duke is absolutely right here, you do not own the software at all.

Yup, you do not own the software at all, the correct term I think is you license the software from Sony?