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Hmmm. So for example, a strength of X86 is that all reads and writes are synchronized by design, guaranteed by hardware. So if two threads call a write instruction, those instructions are guaranteed to happen in the order they were written in. You have no such guarantee on ARM. What's more, Intel has a patent for this.

So now, if the same algorithm is implemented in software to emulate X86 platform on ARM, how is that not infringing on the patent?



how can it possibly infringe on any kind of patent to "promise that commands are executed in order".

maybe thats a difficult problem for hardware to solve. for software, thats just how software works.

maple is solving differential equations and that may have at some point been difficult to write software for. if they have a patent for that, then so be it. I start a company that hires professors who are really good at solving differential equations, and sell the results. basically what maple yields, except produced in a different way. am i infringing on the patent?

patents patent technology. not results. you cant have a patent for "a rocket that flies to the moon" in the sense that now nobody else can build rockets flying to the moon. you can have a patent for a way to store liquid oxygen in tanks to make it yield the energy required to get a rocket to the moon. patenting concepts of things you want to do is at least morally wrong.

a hardware patent should not be capable of preventing someone from writing software that does the same thing.

its like patenting a drug that cures cancer and then using that patent to prevent oncologists from curing cancer by applying chemotherapy.


There seems to be a lot of mingling here of the way things ought to be and the way they are.


Reminds me of a list of "copyright myths" I saw in school.

The first nine were, "you think you can do this simple thing, this reasonable thing, or have any freedom whatsoever? SCREW YOU."

The tenth claimed it was a myth that copyright levied oppressive burdens on the consumer.

Lesson: With any type of intellectual property protection, you can usually just presume it works in the most totally disgusting way imaginable.


Laws operating in a grotesque and unfair way is hardly confined to intellectual property law.


there is. i have no idea how things actually are.

but laws should not contradict common sense.


But they often do.


Do I smell another Oracle v. Google style bullshit lawsuit?




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