Expiry of x86-64 patents

By: Gian-Carlo Pascutto (gcp.delete@this.sjeng.org), April 19, 2019 9:46 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Beastian (noemail.delete@this.aol.com) on April 19, 2019 9:05 am wrote:
> Does anyone think that the upcoming expiry of patents on the core x86-64 instruction set
> which includes SSE2, maybe sooner than 2023 (as the Athlon 64 was introduced in 2003) would
> open the flood gates for third party implementations of compatible processors?
>
> The basic architecture including importantly the memory model could freely be implemented in hardware
> once that core instruction set falls out of patent; I'm unclear about the amount of traction that later
> Intel instructions have gotten in common software, but emulation could at least ensure compatibility.


We (Mozilla) dropped support for non-SSE2 systems in 2016. The next thing would be SSE3. I strongly suspect most software on your desktop still works just fine without SSE3 support.

This does make me wonder: if what you say is correct, then presumably it was never interesting to make an x86 compatible product that only supported 32-bit pre-SSE2 code?

--
GCP
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TopicPosted ByDate
Expiry of x86-64 patentsBeastian2019/04/19 09:05 AM
  Expiry of x86-64 patentsGian-Carlo Pascutto2019/04/19 09:46 AM
    Expiry of x86-64 patentsBeastian2019/04/19 10:06 AM
    Expiry of x86-64 patentsJukka Larja2019/04/19 10:44 AM
      Expiry of x86-64 patentsGian-Carlo Pascutto2019/04/19 11:12 AM
        Expiry of x86-64 patentsJukka Larja2019/04/19 12:41 PM
          Expiry of x86-64 patentsRobert Williams2019/04/19 01:18 PM
          Expiry of x86-64 patentsGian-Carlo Pascutto2019/04/19 02:35 PM
      Expiry of x86-64 patentsGeoff Langdale2019/04/19 02:52 PM
        Expiry of x86-64 patentsJukka Larja2019/04/19 09:38 PM
      Expiry of x86-64 patentsYuhong Bao2019/04/20 02:35 PM
  Expiry of x86-64 patentsDoug S2019/04/19 10:40 AM
    Expiry of x86-64 patentsBeastian2019/04/19 11:10 AM
      Expiry of x86-64 patentsRobert Williams2019/04/20 08:15 AM
  Expiry of x86-64 patentsanyone2019/04/20 07:11 AM
    Expiry of x86-64 patentsGroo2019/04/20 07:29 AM
      Expiry of x86-64 patentswumpus2019/04/20 08:32 AM
  Intel vs AMD patentsYuhong Bao2019/04/20 02:32 PM
    Intel vs AMD patentsBeastian2019/04/20 03:35 PM
  Expiry of x86-64 patentsTravis Downs2019/04/20 07:24 PM
    Expiry of x86-64 patentsnone2019/04/21 07:36 AM
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