[Patents] Dutch MP's demand triviality criteria in the law before allowing SW pats

[Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 03:42:20PM +0100, Francois PELLEGRINI wrote:
> > It
> > is not posible to sell a processor/operating system if there are no
> > applications available for it; therefore a processor needs to be
> > compatible with existing popular processors in order to succeed.
> 
>       Nope.
> 
>       Recent events with Intel patenting the instruction set of
> its new Itanium family is a clear example. In a market that does
> no longer expand as it did, Intel has trouble with its competitors,
> that do not stay on the low-cost low-margin market, but attack it
> on its high-end market.
>       For performance reasons, the 80x86 family must be abandoned,
> as its CISC paradigm is a severe performance impediment (complexifies
> pre-fetching, superscalarity, and such...).

That was predicted to happen long time ago; but it never happened.

And it will not happen for two reasons:

 - What is the point in having a faster machine that cannot run applications
 (Microsoft Office, games, ...)? That machine is not useful.

 - The situation is even worse because of strong economy of
scale. Compatible processors have more sales. Therefore they are
cheaper (there is a very high fixed cost independent of the number of
processors). For example, RISC machines are being abandoned in favour
of Intel compatible for numerical simulation because of their high
prices.

You are right in saying that a RISC processor is cheaper than a CISC
processors other factors being equal. The trick is that sales of Intel
processors are so large, that they can be cheaper. They can afford
whatever design is neccessary for making faster processors. Economy
of scale will lower the costs.

There is only one way to do compatible RISC processors: the method
of Transmeta. These guys are really smart.

A web page that explains neatly how important compatibility is:

"Chicken and egg problems"
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$117

(I hope you will love the style of Joel Spolsky, as I do. On the other
hand I wish the European authorities read the pages of this website,
the contain very useful ideas about the business of software. If you
are starting a software company, you should definitively read these pages).

>       Then, to avoid competitors, Intel has patented the instruction
> set of its new processor family:

In fact, you appear to agree with me that the patenting an instruction
set is for avoiding competition. It is not used to protect research. That
is exactly my point.

Ramon