Patent granted for "system on a chip" framework?

ypw,

I, too, have my doubts on this one.

Even though you may have used this prior to the patent, that would only allow you to continue using the technique without paying royalties. If no one published or "disclosed" the technique, then the patent could be valid. Hopefully you have a public published document prior to their "discovery"? That would kill it immediately.

Since we have been using unidirectional interconnect since Virtex (about 5 years ago now), with soft processor cores, and peripherals, I also believe that we (Xilinx) have a prior use claim. Since we also published that we implemented our "tri-state" buses with unidirectional interconnect in Virtex (as tristates were too slow), it makes this patent pretty dubious for any FPGA application.

As well, any combination of cores uses single direction buses in Virtex and all subsequent families (for speed).

But, if you can not point to a published article describing the technique in an ASIC/ASSP, then they just might "own it."

Aust> The URL would be too long. It's patent 6,601,126, and

Congratulations for USPTO: good work, boys! I've heard that the next patent in line is: "round device that minimizes friction while moving vehicles, a.k.a. wheel", granted for GM, of course...

[...] [...]

Sounds an awful lot like the ARM-originated AMBA interconnect spec, which has been in the public domain for years.

Nice reinforcement of my prejudices about patent examiners.

-- Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Verification * Project Services

Doulos Ltd. Church Hatch, 22 Market Place, Ringwood, Hampshire, BH24 1AW, UK Tel: +44 (0)1425 471223 mail: snipped-for-privacy@doulos.com Fax: +44 (0)1425 471573 Web:

The contents of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.

It was fairly obvious. I was working at a processor company that integrated an existing core with several external peripherals to emulate another processor. We used a lot of unidirectional communications with address decoders.

I'm just curious as to whether a soft core implemented in an FPGA would be close enough to an SoC to make this patent's claims dubious regardless its use in any ASICs.

The AMBA 2.0 spec was published by ARM in May 1999. There are probably several white papers, academic papers, and published web sites that outline similar SoC frameworks.

No surprise to me. Some guy out of MIT got a patent for the mechanics of the human arm (actually, any articulation-muscle mechanism on any animal on earth for the last several billion years).

Face it, patents are business tools. They have nothing to do with invention any more. Very few things any more are inventions, most are implementations. Most are things that good engineers should be able to produce given a problem and related constraints.

Oh well.

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Martin Euredjian

To send private email:

0_0_0_0 snipped-for-privacy@pacbell.net where "0_0_0_0_" = "martineu"

UK

snipped-for-privacy@doulos.com

That actually makes some sense, if the purpose was to create a mechanical replica - i.e. prosthetics or a robot arm. This new patent would seemingly describe a set of techniques that most engineers would never thought of patenting because they were (more or less) in the public domain.

I wouldn't have any problems if someone actually took this idea from the world of FPGAs - extended it to SoC - and then patent the idea before anyone else had used it. However - this doesn't seem to be the case.

I really hope this doesn't turn into the SCO Unix vs Linux fight.

of

on

Well, not in this case, at least in my opinion. It describes something they call "series elastic" actuators. Translation: store energy in a spring (or spring-like element) as opposed to having the motors directly drive the joint. In other words, a tendon. Using springs to store energy (or control force) has been in use for a long, long time, I think.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin Euredjian

To send private email:
0_0_0_0_@pacbell.net
where
"0_0_0_0_"  =  "martineu"

Does a web site count as published? For example, are the cores at Opencores.org considered publicly published because they reside there?

Your average desk lamp comes to mind. Garage door mechanisms are spring loaded too - the ones for solid garage door would seem to be similar to this "arm" mechanism.