>As you said Intel subcontracted AMD to produce early chips,
>up to 80286 and 80287. AMD leveraged the agreements to make
>386 clones, which of course were not subcontracted by
>Intel. AMD has been using the instruction sets ever since
>despite Intel patenting all subseqent technologies and
>copyrighting their trademarks.
I don't know the details of the licencing either, in fact, i don't think they where made public at all, but I assure you there is no broad cross licence between AMD and intel. AMD can not use any of intel's patents, whether it is about architectural implementation tricks, process technology, software, FSB infrastructure, nothing. The opposite is just as true. Only a court order or mutual agreement between Intel and AMD assured that the instruction set and its extentions could be used by both (even though I think AMD pays intel money for it).
<font color=blue>You are right. Today "Licensing agreement" is a more accurate term of the arrangement. However, originally there was a cross technology agreement. (I'll look for it in one of the companies' history). I'm not sure how/why/when it went wrong but Intel did sue for infringement.
I'd love to see how much AMD is paying for a license. Perhaps Intel is laughing all the way to the bank.</font color=blue>
>I have no idea how AMD finagled the 32-bit instruction set,
>MMX, SSE, SSE2, which were not part of that original
>contract.
The agreement has already been extended twice AFAIK. Its always a 10 year agreement.
>...just a quick thought here. I think Tualatin (I never
>spell that right) might have been the best core of the day
Well, intel is/was ahead on process engineering, but I'm not sure a 130nm tualatin would have remained competitive with 130nm Athlons cores given similar processing technology. You really think it would have scaled to 2.3 GHz like Athlon ?
<font color=blue>No I don't believe it would scale as far but I think Intel had the ability to bring Tualatin to the public before AMD could bring Tbred.
We could have had a year of Tualatin instead of Willamette (just speculation).</font color=blue>
>However they still capatilized on Intel's earlier (and very
>expensive) R&D and Marketing.
I think you'd be surprised how cheap the 8088/286/386's where to develop when you compare it with a modern cpu.
<font color=blue>I might be surprised if I knew how they all cost to develope, but I don't. LOL</font color=blue>
But yes, they obviously capatilized on it nevertheless. BUt I think IBM is more to credit (or rather, blame) for making x86 a standard in the first place.
<font color=blue>Isn't that the ultimate marketing goal of any product? To make yours the standard?</font color=blue>
As for piggy backing intels marketing, I don't think so. intel didn't really start marketing itselve until the 3/486 days with their "intel inside" campaings, and I don't see how AMD profited from that. "Intel Inside" and subsequent Pentium branding efforts has done some tremendous damage AMD still suffers from.
<font color=blue>True but Intel didn't have to do the marketing. IBM and Microsoft were doing it all.
AMD was marketing clone chips. It's only when AMD threatened to take a big enough share that Intel started the famous campaign.
Do you really think AMD would have had any market at all if they did not have the x86 instruction set?
What chance do you think they would have had with their own unique processor?
Could they have competed against Intel on technology alone? They were doing well with Flash memory technology but a new ground-up CPU would be a hard sell.
IMO, the "Intel Inside" campaign was more an anti-AMD stunt than it was a marketing campaign for the merits of Intel products.
The demand was for PCs. AMD did what it had to do, fit it's chips into that market.
The Intel Inside campaign capitalized on FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). Without saying so, without stating any superior qualities of Intel CPUs (real or not), Intel implanted in the minds of some consumers that there was something wrong with AMD processors. They didn't have to prove which processor performed better all they had to say was "look for the 'Intel Inside'".
Brilliant in my opinion and not a very expensive campaign considering what the return probably was.</font color=blue>
>By the way, didn't AMD start innovating with the DX4-100
>with the 4X multiplier?
That was IBM afair with their "blue lightening" 486, they where the first to introduce a multiplier. Actually Cyrix was much more innovating back then, or a bit later with their 6x86 chips, even though HOT, borderline overclocked and requiring overclocked chipsets (83 MHz FSB) where very much ahead of intel chips from an architectural POV. Have you seen Bob Colwell's presentation ? I remember a quote from him saying something like "Cyrix where really usefull back then, they would go out and implement all sorts of advanced techniques, and we got to look at it and say:'hey look, that actually works'. we didn't know that". Bob Colwell is ex-intel fellow, lead architect of PPro in case you didnt know.
>Funny, I don't recall K6 being an effective challenger to
>the Intel counterpart.
The K6 was the first time AMD ever stole the performance crown from intel, even if only for a week or so
It was released at up 233 (or 266?) MHz speeds when Pentiums topped out at 200 (or 233). About a week later intel intro-ed the Pentium 2 though and set the record staight even though the 300 Mhz chips where a pure paper launch (yes, even back then) with a $2.000 price tag.
<font color=blue>I forgot about the K6-233 and the others. I don't think I ever knew the facts in the first place. Thanks for the info!
I didn't and will never believe that any of the K6/K6-2/K6-III lines were ever a match for PII. (Did I mention K6 and K6-2's were cheap, though? <b>LOL</b>
I stuck with a Socket 7 motherboard longer than I wanted because PII and Slot 1 was expensive)</font color=blue>
I also seem to remember reading then that one of Intel high brass had sworn that would have been the last time AMD (or any other x86 contender) would outclock intels fastest chips. the athlon must have hurt, I hope he doesn't burn in hell for it
<font color=blue>Give him a Mendocino for eternity! LMAO!!!</font color=blue>
<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>