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OpenCores.org ARM Clone Removed From Web 124

Posted by timothy from the mirror-mirror-on-the-net dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: ""A clone of the ARM7 32-bit RISC processor core, previously available free for download from the Internet, has been taken down or hidden" pending discussions between the core's designer and a Chinese representative of ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England)." Remember, this is a reverse-engineered "clone in the form of a synthesizable Verilog language description."
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OpenCores.org ARM Clone Removed From Web More

OpenCores.org ARM Clone Removed From Web

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  • Does anyone happen to have a copy of the info in question? If so, spread it!

  • IP (Score:1)

    by Chocky2 ( 99588 )
    Licensing their intellectual property is key to ARM's work, so they're far more likely to get all pit-bull over clones than a company that relies more on actual production of the hardware.
  • too bad i would have enjoyed making a modified chip myself, i mean how hard can it be ?? you would only need a fab plant, and those are aval. at the cornor drugstore! I mean really guys it's just like altering game software. : )
    • you would only need a fab plant, and those are aval. at the cornor drugstore!

      Oddly enough, I have a fab right across the hall from my office. Sure came in handy when I unlocked the bridges on my tbird. (good chemicals and tools, no I didnt open it up or anything stupid)

    • too bad i would have enjoyed making a modified chip myself, i mean how hard can it be ?? you would only need a fab plant, and those are aval. at the cornor drugstore! I mean really guys it's just like altering game software. : )

      Actually, all you need is an Eval board from Xilinx, Altera, or any other FPGA vendor with a chip that's big enough to put it on. I have a few older ones lying around my office, but they probably aren't big enough.

      These FPGA's can be a good platform for knowledgeable hobbyists, specifically because they can be re-programmed if you're working on something else. Of course, all the new ones are fine-pitch ball grids, which have so many small pins that you're not going to solder it onto your hobbyist's breadboard anytime soon.

      Now if only they did their core in VHDL, I might be interested!

    • From the article:

      Shen reportedly had planned to improve the core and implement it in an FPGA.

      It wouldn't run as fast as dedicated silicon, but it'd run pretty well. For a commercial product, I dunno if it'd be cheaper to roll-your-own with FPGA's or license ARM's stuff and hire a fab plant to make them. For smaller runs and less demanding applications it might make sense. Sounds like ARM is trying to keep a monopoly so that they can keep prices up.

      I don't think the ARM instructions have been patented (and if they have, they shouldn't be). In any case, I can see patenting a clever implementation of those instructions, but the instructions themselves (i.e. this binary pattern corresponds to this operation) shouldn't be.

    • Re:whats the big deal ? (Score:2, Informative)

      by smasch ( 77993 )
      Actually, you can get short-run IC fabrication for a reasonable price. Check out the MOSIS [mosis.org] website, they will do fabrication runs of 25 chips or so. For a price example, we did a 3mm by 3mm chip in 0.5 micron Agilent (HP-14B), that cost about $8000 for 25 chips, all packaged. If you are a university student, you may be able to get fabrication donated [mosis.org], so you might want to check that out. I've had one chip made through this program. [ucsb.edu] (It's a PIC16C6x compatible microcontroller, for those interested.) And if you want a layout tool, there is a freely available program called MAGIC that can handle this task (sorry too lazy to find link).

  • Chinese totalitarianism (Score:3, Troll)

    by Frothy Walrus ( 534163 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @02:57PM (#2523810)
    Here [idg.net] is the story of how a Chinese grad student developed the ARM7. this looks like yet another case of the Chinese government meatheads forcibly repressing free speech and damaging the natural development of Chinese culture.

    remind me why the US still deals with the People's Republic?
    • Because it's the market of the future and freedom et al. means jack shit to US politicians while bri^H^H^Hcampaign contributions from big business is everything?
    • Because they make all of those electronic things we love so much. Take Compaq pcs for example. 99% of those parts come from Foxconn which is in China. I've heard that foxconn makes most all of the other parts for other PC OEMs too.
      • They make connectors. Since when do connectors comprise 99% of PC parts? ;) Not to mention Foxconn has production facilities in Scotland, the UK, Ireland, and the US as well.

        Now, if you factor in the 96 other suppliers of parts to your Compaq PC, the China Factor goes up considerably... But still nowhere near 99%.

        Justin
    • Becaues there's money to be made there. And money is far more important that some petty little human rights.
      • How about chinese export? I'm sure a few million chinese ppl live from that. One usually doesn't trade with the government but with private businesses (or don't they exist over there?) so if you stop buying things from them because THEIR situation concerning human rights is not very well, you will only cause their situation to become worse. Forcing governments to change their ways by denying certain things (money, work, food, medicine) from their ppl is not the right way in my opinion.

        ...unless it's the only solution and ppl suffer less from the consequences on the long term than they would have if nothing was done. But I don't think that's the case here. And I don't think it is ever. Think: Iraque. We all know the Iraq ppl suffer and Saddam doesn't change anything.

    • Before you bash the Chinese government for suppressing free speech remember the DMCA, and the potentially upcoming SSSCA. The land of the free is quickly following suit, if it in fact isn't already there in many ways. Wanna try and reverse engineer the .pdf format anyone?
    • remind me why the US still deals with the People's Republic?

      ... because it's a fake democraty, cynically headed by corps ?
      • remind me why the US still deals with the People's Republic?


        ... because it's a fake democraty, cynically headed by corps ?


        Which one? The US or the People's Republic? Or both?
    • >remind me why the US still deals with the People's Republic?

      That's easy.

      If we don't deal with them then we don't have any leverage over them. By acting as their trade partners we may be able to improve their attitude towards human rights in the long run.

      It would be easy to tell China to screw themselves, but that wouldn't encourage them to change; It would just reinforce their notion that the rest of the world sucks.

      Moment of philosophy: Sometime I think human rights are overrated, and that some 'people' just aren't worth the effort. Then I wonder if I'm one of those 'people'. Suddenly human rights seems like a much better idea.
    • Show me again where EITHER story says the Chinese government has anything to do with the core being pulled. According to the story, it is ARM that is rattling the sabers.
      You're going to do your cause more damage than good if you replace facts with rhetoric.
    • Not to make any scuses, but totalitarianism may have been the most efficient way to manage a country of that size. For example, they've had this one child per family cap. As a side-effect many girl babies have beened abandoned or killed,
      but from a big picture kind of view, the chinese may have saved the planet from a population explosion crisis.

      A country the size of china need to reform very slowly. Just imagine what would happen if they went cold turkey to liberal human rights and market economy. The chinese mafia would take over the world before you could say uncle, and they'd make the russian mafia look like toddlers.

      Apart from that, it seems U.S lawmakers and government are very keen on having other countries' citizens speek freely, but are not quite as enthusiastic about americans doing so.

      • As a side-effect many girl babies have beened abandoned or killed, but from a big picture kind of view, the chinese may have saved the planet from a population explosion crisis.

        I think I'd prefer the population explosion, but thanks anyway.

        -- Brian

    • Here [eff.org] is the story of how a Russion grad student developed the program that allows one to decrypt the eBook. this looks like yet another case of the American government meatheads forcibly repressing free speech and damaging the natural development of internatiocal (tech) society.

      remind me why should one still call the US the Land of the Free?

      Just a thought...

    • Speaking from a position of total ignorance is easy. Having just come back from three months working in China with Chinese engineers on a number of projects, I can make the following observations:

      1. China is the most capitalist country on the Earth. Far more so than the U.S. China is currently opening up its markets to the world, the US is busily closing theirs ("Export Enhancement Program" = subsidies for inefficient farmers, tariffs against Australian lamb imports despite WTO rulings etc. etc. etc.).

      2. Chinese people in 2001 enjoy significantly more freedom than even 10 years ago.

      3. There is a clear path outlined between where they are now and a democratic future. Already you don't have to be a member of the communist party to run for office at the local level. Also, Hong Kong today is more democratic than at the time of the British handover.

      4. Some parts of China are experimenting with increased freedoms of expression, such as Shanghai and the Shenzhen special economic zone next to HK. This will only continue to improve.

      5. Government is much more transparent than my experience of US buearocracy. Public comment is welcomed on many major decisions such as public works programs.

      6. The US hypocritically compains about China's human rights record. The US also has a death penalty - so China executes more people (about 4x per capita) - this makes the US executions OK? Plenty of innocent people have been put to death in the US (particularly by the Texecutioner). If you're black or hispanic and poor, you are far more likely to be found guilty on the basis of the same evidence than a wealthy white person. Human rights? Hah! The US is responsible for overthrowing democracies in Central and South America and for sponsoring wars and terrorism elsewhere in the world (who was it who created and installed Saddam and Osama in the first place?). Don't complain about the human rights record of China (which is making significant improvements in this area) while you are sliding backwards.

      7. Democracy in the US? Who was it who won your last presidential election?

      - Daniel (heartily sick of American lecturing on human rights and democracy).

    • remind me why the US still deals with the People's Republic?


      Simply because they work for less money than you do.

  • Wow (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Archanagor ( 303653 )
    This sets a particularly tricky prescident for anyone writing emulators for any sort of processor.

    I guess the big question that looms over my mind is "Why are they fighting this so hard?"

    Besides, didn't AMD, Cyrix and such win becuase their clones of the x86 processors were legal?

    Maybe I've missed the boat, here.
    • >>Maybe I've missed the boat, here.

      You have. The issues in the AMD/Cyrix/Intel x86 cases were very different because they involved contractual issues, not reverse engineering.
    • And to take it one step further, this is just the source code, not an actual product. I don't understand how this is a patent issue. If I post source code that implements the MPEG audio layer III algorithm in such a way that it falls under the Fraunhofer patent, am I accountable for the source? I'm not actually implementing it (compiling and distributing binaries), just providing the source code. If someone does implement it then they have to pay the royalties, like the ISO source code for MPEG audio, any one can distribute the source, but if you compile and distribute the binaries you have to pay.

      KidA

  • Utterly ridiculous, and I've designed with an ARM7 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05, 2001 @03:07PM (#2523867)
    Having a synthesizable core does NOT mean that you can just drop it into any modern design. The deliverables for a commercially usable core are significant. Typically you need the following:

    * Verilog code.
    * TWO sets of timing constraints in Synopsys SDC format - one for synthesis, the other for static timing analysis and back-end physical design (i.e. defined clocks, high fanout nets like resets/selects, false/multicycle paths, case analysis statements for setting fastest propagation mode through the design).
    * Synthesis scripts, which have specific mappings to the standard-cell libraries of the particular process (except if implemented in an FPGA).
    * SRAM macro definitions and how they plug into the Verilog code (again, highly library/process specific and not relevant for an FPGA, assuming you can find enough on-board FPGA SRAM to equal the caches necessary for the ARM7)
    * All JTAG-related files, including BSDL and tap controller specs.
    * Scan and functional test vectors for Verilog VCS or NC-Verilog to show the core works.

    I'm sure I've missed a couple of things, but you get all of that, PLUS implementation support from ARM engineers. Mere Verilog code is not going to threaten ARM, and the expense that a company would go to in supporting its own core implementation wouldn't justify the cost in development time. Especially when there are other competitors ready to do it faster and quicker.

    So, IMO, I say SCREW ARM. Arrogant bastards who don't want people to learn about their own cores. Heck, big EDA companies give away their software to universities for education but that can't be used for commercial purposes (which was a big advantage in me getting a job in teh industry). Why can't ARM get their act together and do the same? It will only help to have engineers out of school who know their stuff.
    • Dude, if someone is going to make silicon they're ready to make the scripts and synthesis constraints, that's not the problem. Jtag in particular is easy, I have written a full JTAG TAP myself in VHDL and even a BSDL compiler (in C++).

      With the price of mask sets (the company I am working for is creating a new SOC design in 0.25u: mask cost $250K) the problem is getting credible validation that the CPU is a complete clone and is fully debugged.

      Knowing that the masks cost $250K, and that litigation may tie up their product or cost them bigtime, a $400K license and the royalty from ARM for most companies is just another NRE (Nonrecurring Engineering Charge) that they're happy to pay.

      What's sad is that ARM presumably bullied the poor student chap when in truth they were on at least questionable legal ground assuming it was a ''cleanroom implementation'', which it very much sounds like from the EE Times article.
    • Having a synthesizable core does NOT mean that you can just drop it into any modern design. The deliverables for a commercially usable core are significant. Typically you need the following:

      * Verilog code.


      I'd rather have VHDL, but i can always synthesize a gate level VHDL description at a cost to simulation speed.

      * TWO sets of timing constraints in Synopsys SDC format - one for synthesis, the other for static timing analysis and back-end physical design (i.e. defined clocks, high fanout nets like resets/selects, false/multicycle paths, case analysis statements for setting fastest propagation mode through the design).

      While false path and multicycle path information must be provided if such exist, other timing constraints will be determined by the surrounding design, and must be selected by the system designer anyway.

      Given the RTL description, constraints are a small matter.

      * Synthesis scripts, which have specific mappings to the standard-cell libraries of the particular process (except if implemented in an FPGA).


      Erm... if you can't even do that, what on earth are you doing with that expensive synopsys licence. gimme... ;-)

      Seriously, you can't excpet the supplier of a MCU core to set up your synthesis tool for you.

      * SRAM macro definitions and how they plug into the Verilog code (again, highly library/process specific and not relevant for an FPGA, assuming you can find enough on-board FPGA SRAM to equal the caches necessary for the ARM7)


      Memory are usually provided by separate suppliers anyway. Given adequate information on the core's memory interface a small piece of glue logic would be quick to assemble. (Some do cores come with a MMU, which makes the job somewhat easier though)

      * All JTAG-related files, including BSDL and tap controller specs.


      Not really neccecary, and not really associated with MCU core.

      * Scan and functional test vectors for Verilog VCS or NC-Verilog to show the core works.


      Some of the point of an ip module is that you should have a reasonable excpectation that it is already verified. Functional testing of the core should therefore not be neccecary (though in this case I would propably do some verification myself)

      Production testvectors are generated during synthesis, and are dependent of the synthesis environment and libraries, and thus not associated with the MCU core.

  • /.ed already! (Score:2, Informative)

    by merlin_jim ( 302773 )
    Opencores.org is /.ed...

    google cache here [google.com]

    Wow, I'm such a karma whore.

    Seriously guys, cool site. FPGAs are dynamically reconfigurable logic circuitry that can emulate almost any other hardware, AT THE HARDWARE LEVEL. Tell it with software how to connect the transistors up, and that's what it does. OpenCores.org focuses on creating CPUs for FPGAs (verilogic being one of the two big manufacturers of FPGAs) that will run standard instruction sets, such as ARM or Intel (mostly focusing on embedded applications, because an FPGA emulating a core is SLOW... they can get up to about 50 MHz clock speed, but not much more)

    Alright, now I don't feel like such a ho'...
    • go here [itb.ac.id] for a mirror of the core design

    • FPGA fun (Score:2, Informative)

      by ajlitt ( 19055 )
      Lat I checked, Verilog [verilog.com] wasn't even a company. I bet you're thinking of Xilinx [xilinx.com] or Altera [altera.com]. Note that Xilinx gets badass points for providing free development tools that aren't half bad, even if they are for Windoze.

      As far as speed is concerned, there are two big factors that determine how fast you can run a hardware implementation of a design. First, there's the maximum clock speed of the FPGA. This is a parameter of the FPGA used, and, like CPUs, varies with the manufacturer and model. While it is possible to circumvent this with totally asynchronous designs, as you're not required to use the chip-wide clock, it's only practical in only a few unique applications (ARM AMULET). Second, the size of the design will affect the speed at which it will run. A simulation of an Athlon or a Pentium III (excluding large memories, like caches and ROMs) will be forced to run slowly because the propagation delay between far away cells in the FPGAs and, in extreme cases, between individual FPGAs themselves, will be too great to support high clock speeds. Plus, the gate propagation will be slower in an FPGA than on raw silicon. This factor is also somewhat dependent on the HDL CAD tool used and how smart its automatic floor planner is. Now put something simple like an ARM in an FPGA, and you can probably hit much higher speeds.
      • Note that Xilinx gets badass points for providing free development tools that aren't half bad, even if they are for Windoze.

        Don't Altera get badass points for free dev tools as well then?

  • Joke (Score:3, Funny)

    by MentlFlos ( 7345 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @03:07PM (#2523870)
    What.. no bad "Attack of the Clones" jokes yet? I'm surprised /. :)
    • Goodness no. I'm to busy trying to find out what part Yoda plays in Intel vs. AMD to worry about ARM vs. OpenCores!
      hehe....Well, there had to be at least ONE bad joke! :)

  • IP Theft? (Score:1, Informative)

    by atrowe ( 209484 )
    The ARM CPU architecture is patented and ARM has sucessfully defended [arm.com] their architecture against IP theft in the past.

    It shouldn't matter how their competitors were able to copy their RISC processors, the important fact here is that the device has been granted a US patent. I'm sure people are going to say that reverse engineering makes it perfectly legal, but that is simply not the case. Reverse engineering protects OpenCores.org from being accused of corporate espionage, by proving that they legally obtained the information necessary to copy the core, but their posting of patented information to their website is what is being argued against. Reverse engineering is nothing more than a legitimate way for engineers to steal the intellectual property of competitors and gain an unfair business advantage. ARM has invested millions of dollars and countless hours into developing their processor core, and they are completely justified in defending what is rightfully theirs against so-called "reverse engineering" patent theft.

    Let's look at it this way, there are hundereds of very simple devices that have received US patents. Ever seen that microwavave bacon cooker advertised on Infomercials? I'm pretty sure that without too much effort, I could figure out how that was made without looking at any of it's inventors design specs. Do I legally have a right to sell my own "reverse engineered" version of someone elses invention? I should think not!

    • Re:IP Theft? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ronin SpoilSpot ( 86591 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @03:19PM (#2523937)
      > Reverse engineering protects OpenCores.org from
      > being accused of corporate espionage, by proving
      > that they legally obtained the information
      > necessary to copy the core, but their posting of
      > patented information to their website is what is
      > being argued against.

      There are NO rules against posting patented information. In fact, patenting REQUIRES full disclosure. Patents are NOT copyrights!

      > Reverse engineering is nothing more than a
      > legitimate way for engineers to steal the
      > intellectual property of competitors and gain an
      > unfair business advantage.

      Using "legitimate" and "steal" in the same sentence just goes to prove that you have not understood the point of reverse engineerin, or
      of patents for that matter.

      You don't need to prevent reverse engineering if you are protected by a patent. A patent prohibits competitors from creating the same product, even if they reverse engineer it (which should not be necessary anyway, since the information is in the patent application anyway).

      > ARM has invested millions of dollars and
      > countless hours into developing their processor
      > core, and they are completely justified in
      > defending what is rightfully theirs against so-
      > called "reverse engineering" patent theft.

      Patents are not made to reward investment, but to reward products. It doesn't matter if you spent a billion on finding the result or it came to you in a dream.

      > I'm pretty sure that without too much effort, I
      > could figure out how that was made without
      > looking at any of it's inventors design specs.
      > Do I legally have a right to sell my own
      > "reverse engineered" version of someone elses
      > invention? I should think not!

      And you would be right. That would be infringing on their patent. Now, if you found a radically different way to fry bacon in a microwave (more elaborate than putting it on paper tissue while cooking, which has lots of prior art), then you would not infrige on the patent, and would maybe even be eligable for your own patent.

      /RS

    • Re:IP Theft? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Does it violate a patent, though?

      I don't know a whole lot about the patents in question, but it would seem to me that compatibility shouldn't necessarily imply patent infringement. If I achieve ARM compatibility using totally different methods than those used in the actual ARM processors (a lookup table instead of an algorithm, an instruction decoder based on classical design principles instead of the latest and greatest, etc.), I don't see how it's an infringement upon their intellectual property-- it's functionally the same, but it uses different methods to acheive that functionality.

      On the other hand, if the core in question DOES violate patents... well, ARM does need to protect its intellectual property.
    • It shouldn't matter how their competitors were able to copy their RISC processors, the important fact here is that the device has been granted a US patent.

      Yes, but if I understand correctly, posting a description of a machine (in the English language) is not necessarily infringement, is it? I'm not sure if a patent can trump such a posting, as patents are (in theory) supposed to be open, not secret. Now, if you took the info from the posting and used it to build a product, that might be infringement...

      I'm probably wrong, though.

    • .... but their posting of patented information to their website is what is being argued against.

      Huh?

      Incorporating IP covered by a patent into a product (without licence) is illegal. Publishing patented information is not. It's publically available anyway, it's not a trade secret.

      Surely no law has been violated by the publishers of the web site. Someone who downloads the verilog and uses it illegally could be in violation of the law, but not the publisher, surely?
      • Surely no law has been violated by the publishers of the web site. Someone who downloads the verilog and uses it illegally could be in violation of the law, but not the publisher, surely?

        This is one of the biggest problems with the whole notion of patents for abstract devices like software. Such patents blur the lines separating patent and copyright in some very unpredictable ways.

        If a computer program or algorithm can be patented, then is publishing some explanation of the algorithm a violation (because it's functional), or is it protected because it's simply speech? How much of a gray area is there?

    • Reverse engineering protects OpenCores.org from being accused of corporate espionage, by proving that they legally obtained the information necessary to copy the core, but their posting of patented information to their website is what is being argued against.

      So? Patented information _has_ to be public -- it's on the patent application, for deity's sake. It's the use of the information which is protected by the patent, not the publication thereof.

      Twoflower
    • Dude, it depends on who publishes the results of the ruling: See http://www.picoturbo.com/News/Court_Update/court_u pdate.html for the PicoTurbo view of things. I know that this was interpreted by the industry locally to be a Picoturbo win considering the fact that I've heard of a couple of folks looking seriously at Picoturbo now. Last I heard - you can't patent an ISA - you CAN patent particular methods used to implement that ISA.

      As for not liking Reverse Engineering - get over it!
    • Sorry, but your post makes no sense. If some architectural features of the ARM processor are patented, then they certainly may not be implemented in another product. Mind you, trying to draw a line between "implementation" and "description" here seems VERY blurry. Is source code speech? An appeals court said so the other day, with regards to DeCSS.


      But that argument, I would think, is moot here since you can NOT patent an interface. If you could, then Sun would have patented all of their Java interfaces. Hell, it's not even clear how far copyright applies to something.


      So a reverse-engineered "work-alike" product is by no means necessarily infringing on a patent. It MAY be infringing on the patent, if it uses the patented mechanism (if it does not, it clearly does not violate the patent, even if it achieves the same results, i.e. can simulate/run ARM instructions). Furthermore, as mentioned above, it has to be established that the source code (which any HDL code basically is) is an implementation rather than a description. I don't know how this line is meaningfully drawn, but it's clear that it is pretty hard to convince a court in the US that something distributed for free in source form violates a patent (or else organizations like Fraunhofer would have tried to squelch the many free MP3 codec implementations out there).


      If you want the exact wording from US Patent Law, see the USPTO summary document [uspto.gov]. An infringer is someone who "makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention". Are you "making" an invention by writing an accurate description of it in an HDL? What about an accurate description in pseudocode? Are you making it when you encode it into an FPGA and deploy or sell a full product using it? Or are you just learning about it and testing a design for compatibility with it? The law just doesn't deal well with software/firmware/things on the boundary between digital information and physical stuff.

      • I'm not sure if this is a reply to my post about the ISA - but if it is, you seem to contradict yourself.

        At the same time - in patents it seems from my limited experience (only hold two patents) the distance between a description of something and the implementation of something is ALL important.

        One of my patents is a different implemenation of a specific feature on a competitors' product. There is a description of what the external interface looks like - I replicated interface with my own internal workings. Quite different enough to receive a patent.

        My point is demonstrated by the existance of Amdahl which in days gone by used to build an ISA compatible version of IBM's architecture. The point was settled back in the 70's or earlier. You can't patent an ISA. Another example, there are LOTS of implementations of the 8051 by non-Intel licensee's. Oddly - you don't see Intel running after these people because they've already been down this road.

        You can't patent mov Ax,Bx - but perhaps you could patent a series of registers organized into a a register file with an instruction register which has an attached collection of timing and control logic that implements mov Ax,Bx in a particular manner. That is the difference in a nutshell.
    • The ARM CPU architecture is patented and ARM has sucessfully defended [arm.com] their architecture against IP theft in the past.

      That's a gross mischaracterization. First, ARM has had a legal victory, but which claim that was actually based on was never decided. Concluding from that that ARM has "successfully defended" any particular aspect, or the entirety, of their architecture is just wrong.

      Second, there is no indication that any form of "IP theft" has occurred. Creating a core from scratch that works like the ARM chip is entirely legal in and of itself.

      As for you "microwave bacon cooker" example, you can legally make something that doesn't infringe the patent, no more and no less. Since the basic technology for microwave bacon cooking has been known for a while, their patent may not protect anything particularly important, and you may well be able to copy most of their engineering effort.

    • -atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.

      It's spelled "tolerance"

      fscking mensa retards...

    • As a mensan, you should know that patents actually prohibit you from keeping the design from publication. All a patent does is protect your right to make money from the design. Anyone can order a copy of the patent in all its gore from the patent office, and I think that anyone can then post the exact text of the patent on a web page. IBM and the patent office both post an awful lot of the patent text for all the recently filed patents on their sites.

      You still cannot sell a copy of the bacon cooker, as you mentioned, though. You also can't build an ARM core and put it in a chip that you sell for the same reason.

  • Quite Understandable (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Aztech ( 240868 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @03:15PM (#2523907)
    I must say that ARM are a pretty cool company not the usual nasty corporate bully that Slashdot likes to portray, it's nice to think a bit of the Acorn lives on in nearly every mobile phone and PDA's etc.

    However... remember ARM are purely an IP company they don't manufacture stuff like Intel so IP is their sole source of income, if you remove that, they die, I don't blame them for defending it, whether is was 'reverse-engineered' or produced from original designs is beside the point... it implements the ARM instruction set and therefore infringes upon ARM's patents.

    Of course people here will probably bleat on about how any company could have the audacity to creative new products and patent stuff, but they make good products and spent a lot of cash producing those designs, revenue is needed in order to produce better products, like X-Scale for example, Intel have a ARM architecture license due to numerous entangled lawsuits and cross licensing.

    I don't think ARM has much to worry about anyway, if a fab actually started producing cores on this design then ARM en masse then they could sue the hell out of them or the companies that use them in final products, ARM designs permeate many chips and designs out here so gaining access to a legitimate design is not a monumental task, but fabbing millions of chips illegitimately is not easy to get away with since people would definitely notice.
    • Hmmm, not the ARM Ltd. I'm familiar with. They have always seemed quite willing to bully anyone, big or small. I like the processor, but I don't like the company at all. I think that is one of the reasons that MIPS has done so much better with a far less useful processor design.

      WRT bleating, how about those who bleat about soem of us picking on a company that tries to fradulently steal other folks rights (presumed -- I've not read anything directly from ARM)? I don't even think the MS legal department would go after someone for explaining an MS patent (what OpenCores did for the ARM7). ARM is right in there with the MPAA....
    • it implements the ARM instruction set and therefore infringes upon ARM's patents.

      What are you talking about? I know nothing of their patents -obviously you dont either- because to assume any implementation of a compatible instruction set is infringing is ludicrous... care to elaborate...?

      fabbing millions of chips illegitimately is not easy to get away with since people would definitely notice

      Unless, it is *IN FACT* legal, as the EE times suggests, ARM is on slim-ice here by accusing patent infringment seeing as how the EEng in question actually produced this by a new implementation of the instruction set, not by reverse engineering the core itself and cloning it.

      I think you need to take a step back and understand that 'intellectual property' is not "whatever the hell some capitalist calls any-goddamn-thing he makes".. although it is getting to that point these days, where any capitalist can decree himself the owner - in every aspect - of any intellectual facet of his widget.

  • patented? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gmp ( 155289 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @03:19PM (#2523938) Homepage
    The idea that a verilog description can infringe a patent is very problematic. Patents are supposed to teach an invention, but collect roalties on (or block) implementations. A verilog description is nothing more than a very detailed teaching of how to practice the art described in the patent. If the patent is valid (and you don't have any other objections to patent law in general) then there is no legal problem blocking someone from making a chip based on the verilog. But a patent holder has absolutely no right to block someone from teaching, in great detail, how to practice the art described in the patent (which after all was what the inventor was supposed to do when the patent was filed in the first place). Unless there is some trade secret misappropriation going on here, or unless ARM is claiming a copyright on their architecture that blocks any implementation of it, ARM appears to have no legal basis for what they are doing. As for the copyright theory, good luck getting that to stand in the US (see Lotus v. Borland [panix.com]).

  • Be careful here (Score:5, Interesting)

    by YU Nicks NE Way ( 129084 ) on Monday November 05, 2001 @03:23PM (#2523952)
    Be careful how you interpret this stuff; the headlines are much more inflammatory than the situation warrants.

    If you go through to the original EE Times article, you'll discover that the nnARM implementation was radically incomplete: no interrupt handling, no virtual memory, no coprocessor instructions, no THUMB support. For what the guy in question was doing, that's fine; he can be perfectly comfortable building a GPS receiver w/o any of that -- but no large-scale embedded system builder would be interested in this chip. (A cell phone manufacturer would need to qualify any such chip set...no way. Linux and WinCE won't run on it. QNX won't run on it. Although I suppose ucLinux might run on it, that would require a full port to a new instruction set width, and that would cost much more than anyone would save by doing it.)

    That puts quite a different light on this than the articles in the Reg implied. A chip like this poses no threat to ARM's licensing revenues. What it does do is confuse people about what an ARM core can do. In my opinion, ARM has a legitimate beef about that.
    • That puts quite a different light on this than the articles in the Reg implied. A chip like this poses no threat to ARM's licensing revenues. What it does do is confuse people about what an ARM core can do. In my opinion, ARM has a legitimate beef about that.
      Thats a trademark issue. You don't need to pull distribution of the processor over that. You solve it by calling the processor something other than "arm."
      • Well, that and don't call it ARM-compatible, 'cause it ain't. If you read the EE Times article, Shen is having a teleconference with ARM later today. I'd guess that will the topic of discussion.

    • Re:Be careful here (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      its has THUMB support (1.22 anyway), interrupt handling is provided by the other stuff on opencores, a full copro is available on opencores and VM support was being worked on.
  • ...to produce one of these ARM cores? I'm sure students don't have access to full size wafer fabs so I am curious.

    Slightly more on topic, it almost sounds like ARM wants to hire Shen by how they said "he's a very bright chap, so we want to talk to him."
    • Time for me to pimp my employer, Rochester Institute of Technology [rit.edu]. If memory serves we have the only fab in the US that is owned by the college and used for teaching first, industry second.

      Granted I work for Computer Engineering, not Micro-e so my brain is prob quite fuzzy on this. Of course the fab being right across the hall from my office is pretty damn cool.

  • I thought the constitution allowed reverse engineering. Or is this some new side effect of the DMCA that I wasn't aware of ?

    what is the point of cloning the ARM anyway, it is relatively cheap, and hardly at the cutting edge of processor performance ?

    I mean, I despise the undemocratic murderous quasi-talibanic Chinese regime as much as the next American, but really there are other issues that we could criticise China for apart from trivial copyright infractions.

    I think this shows the hidden capitalist bias of slashdot. People's rights are infringed on a daily basis in China, they are committing genocide in Tibet, and what does slashdot whine about ? Intellectual Property.

    I realise Americans are insular and capitalistic, but have the events of Sept 11th gone completely over your heads ? Or are you in denial ?

  • ARM actively protects thier patents, but may loose (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They have sued Pico Turbo, and may have
    threatened others at least one of which seems to
    have caved (Faraday). However, Pico Turbo has
    different view of the ruling issued by the judge
    than ARM does...

    http://www.picoturbo.com/News/Court_Update/court _u pdate.html
    http://www.arm.com/news.ns4/iwpList125/F08341B44 87 4FE3A80256A7200373224?OpenDocument&

    Also note that MIPS also tries to take a simmilar
    stance with instruction set compatible cores.
    Not that these are impossible to write. Have a
    look at http://www.gaisler.com for a SPARCv8
    clone, which is very high quality and complete
    Unlike the nnARM, it's actually complete and
    flexable... Proof of what one/a few talented
    people can do, which should scare the crap out
    of ARM and MIPS

    FWIW, you can't patent an instruction set IMHO.
  • There may not be much difference in the minds of manufacturers between programming a chip to act like another chip (but slower) and using a poor quality Star Trek replicator to make a copy of it. You suddenly are capable of doing things with your hardware for free that you used to have to give them money (by buying *their* hardware) to be able to do.

    I can see in the near future that this may become a big issue for chip manufacturers - between FPGAs which do emulation in hardware and companies like Transmeta that do the emulation in software, the risk gets larger as the technology gets better. How long will it be before the operators of file-sharing servers get sued by the CFAA (Chip Fabricators Association of America (fictitious organization, as if it weren't obvious)) because they are letting people swap source code for programmable microprocessors that works better than the original hardware?

    How different is that from suing OpenCores.org for providing instructions for making a clone?

    Are the instructions protected as free speech? Will source code implementations be similarly protected?

    I know which way the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc. would like to see it go, but I also know that I don't want to live in a world where the inventor of the replicator will be sued for being an accessory to patent infringement.

    I think it's time to write another letter to my congressmen...
  • http://www.fpgacpu.org/#011102
    http://www.fpgacpu.org/log/jan01.html#010129
  • A lab for a VLSI course uses it

    http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~slee3/vlsi/lab3/arm/r tl /
  • This [mrtc.mdh.se] project is definitely related. These guys have built an ARM7-clone too. They considered making it public under a free/open source license but were apparently afraid of legal consequences.

    EETimes story [eetimes.com]

    More stories available from the first link.

    I think it's scary.

  • There was a slashdot posting here [slashdot.org]. I'd made the point that ARM were very protective of their IP, and it doesn't surprise me at all that it was taken down. I'd seen that it wasn't there for a while now, but hadn't heard that this was the case until today.

    I believe that their patents include the use of banked registers in a particular way. I have been wondering if it's possible to create an ARM code compliant processor, but don't do all the patentable features of the ARM itself...

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