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Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional)

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George Neuner wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:50:26 -0700, "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew"
> <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net>  wrote:
>
>> (1) comp-arch.net is not just supposed to be new ideas. It is also
>> supposed to be a collection of important old ideas. Especially since the
>> wheel of reincarnation turns around and around in our business.
>>
>> One of the big reasons I am trying to write comp-arch.net (which is now
>> on hold) is that I got tired of seeing old ideas be recycled, and
>> claimed to be new.  This happens particularly for ideas that went a bit
>> beyond the state of the art at the last turn of the wheel of
>> reincarnation, so that they never got into textbooks, and might not have
>> been patented, which get reinvented 20 years later.
>
> Yes.  And btw, "Thank you" for your effort!
>
> I, for one, am very tired of seeing patents pop out on things that I
> learned about 25 years ago.  I'm in software so I don't see too many
> hardware patents, but I imagine that the situation in hardware is just
> as bad as in software.

In some ways even worse:

Dating back to the time when sw patents were still impossible in the US, 
lots of text book sw algorithms were documented, right?

With VLSI several companies realized that if they simply implemented one 
of those algorithms in hw, they could indeed get a patent on it.

I was once asked to audit a group of 10 patents for a lawsuit, of those 
4 were _really_ obvious, on the order of "the only answer to be expected 
of a first-year CS or EE student", another 4 were textbook (i.e. Knuth 
or similar) algorithms in hw/fw, and only the final pair actually 
contained something I was willing to view as an actual idea.

I reported this and never heard back from them, so I presume these 
lawyers represented the suing company, not the defendant. :-)

Terje
-- 
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

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LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-10-01 20:33 -0700
  Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) Brett Davis <ggtgp@yahoo.com> - 2011-10-20 17:25 -0500
    Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-10-21 22:50 -0700
      Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) Brett Davis <ggtgp@yahoo.com> - 2011-10-22 18:22 -0500
        Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"> - 2011-10-23 13:53 +0200
      Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2011-10-24 11:34 -0400
        Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"> - 2011-10-24 17:47 +0200
      Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-10-26 18:10 -0700
  Re: LL/SC (load-linked/store-conditional) jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2011-10-27 07:57 -0700

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