I have one patent about a new microprocessor architecture so called "Network-on-Chip Dataflow Architecture". The patent has been proved in Germany, and is processed in the US. According to my analyzing, it is very powerful, low power consumption, and requires low memory bandwidth. Its performance lies in between normal microprocessors and FPGA prototypes depending on application. I want to introduce it to companies so that people can use it but I do not know the procedure. It would be very grateful if you could give me some advices.
"There's many a slip twixt cup and lip". Inventing something is a notable effort. Prospering from that achievement is a separate and very different effort. There is no receipt for promoting an invention. Securing a patent is a good start to prevent it from being stolen. But in electronics it is hard to invent something that can be fully utilized without infringing on other patents. That is why most companies swap patents rather than to try to utilize just their own patents.
Where does this leave the individual inventor? In a hole that is hard to climb out of. First I would recommend that you determine which application markets would get the most gain from changing from what they are using now to your invention. Then you need to understand enough about their business to state the business case in terms they will understand. You also need to understand their business case enough to be able to explain how *perceived* shortcomings in your approach will not harm their buisness model. This can be a lot easier than trying to make them understand that the shortcomings don't exist. Remember that your view does not matter, only their view and how you can shape it.
Keep in mind that a name can shape the initial impression, which for many customers, may be the only impression that is ever formed. So choose your product name carefully. You don't want to create the wrong impression. For example, the use of the word Network in the name here implies that it would be for networking applications. I suspect this is not really the case and "Network" refers to how the workings of the chip are interconnected. But without getting any further info, a potential customer may get the wrong impression and never inquire further.
So in what markets do you see your processor design excelling beyond the current and future processor architectures?
Your guidance was both very wise and beautifully presented!
"rickman" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@64g2000cwx.googlegroups.com... | On Mar 3, 10:54 am, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote: | > Hi Friends, | >
| > I have one patent about a new microprocessor architecture so called | > "Network-on-Chip Dataflow Architecture". The patent has been proved in | > Germany, and is processed in the US. According to my analyzing, it is | > very powerful, low power consumption, and requires low memory | > bandwidth. Its performance lies in between normal microprocessors and | > FPGA prototypes depending on application. I want to introduce it to | > companies so that people can use it but I do not know the procedure. | > It would be very grateful if you could give me some advices. | >
| > Thank you very much in advance. | | "There's many a slip twixt cup and lip". Inventing something is a | notable effort. Prospering from that achievement is a separate and | very different effort. There is no receipt for promoting an | invention. Securing a patent is a good start to prevent it from being | stolen. But in electronics it is hard to invent something that can be | fully utilized without infringing on other patents. That is why most | companies swap patents rather than to try to utilize just their own | patents. | | Where does this leave the individual inventor? In a hole that is hard | to climb out of. First I would recommend that you determine which | application markets would get the most gain from changing from what | they are using now to your invention. Then you need to understand | enough about their business to state the business case in terms they | will understand. You also need to understand their business case | enough to be able to explain how *perceived* shortcomings in your | approach will not harm their buisness model. This can be a lot easier | than trying to make them understand that the shortcomings don't | exist. Remember that your view does not matter, only their view and | how you can shape it. | | Keep in mind that a name can shape the initial impression, which for | many customers, may be the only impression that is ever formed. So | choose your product name carefully. You don't want to create the | wrong impression. For example, the use of the word Network in the | name here implies that it would be for networking applications. I | suspect this is not really the case and "Network" refers to how the | workings of the chip are interconnected. But without getting any | further info, a potential customer may get the wrong impression and | never inquire further. | | So in what markets do you see your processor design excelling beyond | the current and future processor architectures? |
In article , "rickman" writes: |> |> "There's many a slip twixt cup and lip". Inventing something is a |> notable effort. Prospering from that achievement is a separate and |> very different effort. ...
Very true! And the abilities needed for the two rarely occur in the same person, for well-known psychological reasons.
congratulations. have you ever had a look at the DAPDNA architecture from IPLEX and the picochip architecture? these architectures almost match your specs/ claims.
I don't think patents or not makes much of a difference. What you need is a convincing proof of concept -- few are willing to invest in something completely new unless they can be sure it will be worthwhile, and just having a paper design of an architecture with no implementation, support chips, compilers, operating systems, etc. will require massive investments to make commercially useful.
ARM had a proof of concept in the Archimedes computer from Acorn, which persuaded Apple to invest in the CPU architecture (intending to use it for their Newton PDA and, romours tell, for a home computer that never saw the light of day).
Perhaps you missed my point. I am not saying that a Patent is everything. Read my original post here. I am saying that a Patent is required to prevent others from stealing your invention, but you also need to know how to market the invention to show how it is to the advantage of your customers.
To say a patent does not make much of a difference is a bit silly. Sure you can make your invention open source and let the world have it, but that means you have to make your money by other means which is not the same for hardware as it is for software.
I don't see why you are using ARM as an example. That is my example of how they are preventing the world from copying their famously popular instruction set as compared to Intel who allowed their 8051 and x386 ISAs to be copied freely. As a result Intel has lots of direct competition for sockets and ARM is looking like the 32 bit 8051 except that they make money off of every chip built. The only real barrier to potential customers developing or using open source ARM designs is the patent ARM has on an essential circuit I am told. When that runs out in another 10 or so years, ARM7 will be freely copied if anyone still has interest in it. Maybe that is why they have come out with the Cortex M3, to start a new patent clock ticking?
Indeed. Selling a new unproven idea is much harder than an improvement of an existing idea that complements what a company is already doing. If you made a better branch predictor you would find many interested parties. Dataflow architectures are outside mainstream and will require a lot of effort to show that they compete with conventional hardware and software. Most companies prefer solutions not unsolved (or unsolveable!) problems.
So I think it is pretty unlikely someone just takes the idea and runs with it - having a patent on it or not is pretty much irrelevant as the patent on its own is only a tiny part of a complete working system. I think the best way is to set up your own company and do it yourself. Once you've got it all working you can start thinking about selling the proven technology to other companies.
The difference between ARM and x86 is that ARM doesn't have fabs, let alone ones that are the best in the world, so it can only sell IP. The patents are needed to protect this IP. In addition, an ARM design takes far less effort to copy than an x86 design, so the risk of someone making a competitive clone without paying ARM is much higher. Companies have tried making x86 CPUs but nobody had enough resources to compete with Intel/AMD, so no patent protection is required for x86.
Not really. ARM7 is 12 years old and already at the end of its useful life, so it was becoming urgent to design something better. It's always better to obsolete your own products rather than let a competitor do it!
Incidentally, ARM2 is now over 20 years old, so the earliest patents must be close to running out. Will anyone bother cloning an ARM2? I think it's very unlikely - ARM2 was obsoleted by ARM7 in 1995. So few will be interested in Thumb-1 when the Thumb patents run out.
Of course new patents apply to the Cortex architecture to protect the investment, but it's the technology that attracts ARM's customers in the first place, not whether it is patented or not.
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. If you are saying that there is much more than just patent to makeing money on an invention, then we agree. If you are saying you don't need a patent, we disagree totally. The patent is the absolute requirement on a technical invention if you don't want people to copy your work and make money without giving you a cut.
I disagree. They could protect the IP with any number of mechanisms such as encrypted libraries, non-disclosure agreements, etc. But the invention could be duplicated by simply reading the ISA documentation and designing your own... if there were no patents involved. My understanding is that ARM has patented some feature of the way they handle interrupts (not sure I am getting this right) that is closely tied to the instruction set. So to implement the instruction set you
*have* to violate the patent.
If ARM did not have a patent, their chips would go the path of the
8051 and be even more widely popular than they are now, but like Intel gets nothing from the 8051 clones, ARM would get nothing.
It has nothing to do with fabs or the size of the company. BTW, did you try to slip one past us by saying Intel/AMD as if they were one company??? Doesn't AMD *compete* with Intel in the x86 market??? Sure the others may have gone by the wayside as happens in so many electronics sectors, but AMD is eating Intel's lunch and it is all because there were no patents that could be used to stop AMD. Oh, Intel tried! They spent several years in court and AMD had to redesign the microcode for their version of the 486. But from then on AMD had free reign to make work-alike chips with varying periods of boom and bust. The last few years have seen AMD nibbling away at Intel market share and now they are starting to be a force in the server market. Too bad Intel didn't have a patent to protect their archetecture.
Funny, when I talk to the vendors of ARM MCUs they tell me that they have great new ARM7 parts coming out nearly every day. So far only Luminary has a CM3 chip line out and they can't compete with the ARM7 except in limited areas. One way their parts are very uncompetitive is in power consumption. But we'll have to wait for others to produce the CM3 in more modern technologies.
That is the point of continuing to reinvent the archtecture and aquire new patents... to continue to lock out competition from using the ISA that you made popular.
You just don't understand the business issues. Sure, customers don't care about your patents. But that is not what they are for. A patent protects your inventions against being copied by your competition. That means they have to do their own work and not ride on your coattails. Then your customers say with you to get the inventions if they are better than the competitor's inventions (along with all the other stuff that goes with MCUs such as support, knowledge base, tools, etc).
This all seems pretty simple and obvious to me. Are you pulling my leg?
The 32 bit market is not all going ARMs way, and the protection on cores is less of a road block than it was, and getting less over time. (see below)
Not quite : A patent is a license to litigate. Yes, it gives some protection, but there are other ways to compete than a slavish-clone, and it is no help then.
and that 'other stuff' is getting easier to clone these days.
Freescale are about the spin their Coldfire-V1 core,(and did a new Starcore recently), Zilog have Zneo, MIPS refuses to go away, Atmel have AVR32, and DSP devices from Analog Devices, and TI continue to hold the high ground on speed.
Lattice have an open source 32 bit CPU - so the core itself is less and less of a hold over customers.
Of course, a core-vendor will claim the core is everything :)
Au contraire, x86 is probably the architecture with the most patents covering it. It's impossible to make an x86-compatible CPU without a licence, as many ISA features are patented. Intel and AMD have a cross-licencing agreement regarding x86 (any x86-related patents that Intel gets AMD can use and vice versa), and various licencing agreements exist with other companies regarding x86 as well (IBM, Via, Transmeta, probably a few others). The ones that I know of require per-CPU royalty payments to Intel.
This cross-licencing with AMD is suspected to be part of the reason Intel was/is throwing so much money at Itanium to keep it afloat. If IA64 becomes more widespread than x86, they have AMD over a barrel since the cross-licencing agreements don't allow AMD to create an IA64 CPU. Unsurprisingly, AMD reacted with x86-64, and so far IA64 is showing no signs of an imminent takeover ...
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Michael Brown
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I'm working on a product line that just migrated from ARM7 to NIOS2. Nobody cares about the CPU core. We're using the same OS and same compiler. Changing CPU cores was trivial -- and it even involved going from big-endian to little-endian.
Changing Ethernet controllers and various other peripherals was the painful part. ;)
It's the peripherals where all the work is -- the CPU just doesn't matter.
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Grant Edwards grante Yow! I wonder if I should
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I'm saying that you don't need a patent immediately. Only when you've got a product that works (and we agree that takes a lot more than just having a patent) and are ready to sell you need patents.
However a patent means the invention is published, so anyone (say in a country where you didn't patent) could copy it easily. World-wide patents are very expensive, so most only patent in the US and UK. Patents are very useful when you're selling things that can be easily copied or reverse engineered, but they are a double-edged sword.
Yes, without patents the IP would be unprotected. I think you agree...
Indeed. My guess of what would happen is that everybody creates incompatible extensions and there is less incentive to invest into innovative designs as they are easily cloned. We'd still use ARM2's...
Intel and AMD are a duopoly, and yes it's great there is fierce competition between them (thanks for reminding me), but that's not the subject of discussion. My point is that the cost of making an x86 clone is far higher than making an ARM clone, so protection is more important for ARM.
Fabs are an important difference: if you have a fab you sell chips to end users, not IP to companies with fabs. Without patents you can still sell chips (end users can't make chips themselves), but it becomes a lot harder to sell IP to a fab company (they can make the IP themselves and avoid royalties). Selling IP is hard with patents - and impossible without.
They would say that, wouldn't they? If you read ARM's latest financial statements you can see that licensing of ARM7 is clearly declining fast (under 5% of total license revenue in 2006, down from 18% in 2002). That doesn't imply it won't stay popular for the next few years, but ARM9 and Cortex-M3 are appearing fast.
Yes, I'd like to see ARM7 and Cortex-M3 on the same process
That's totally wrong. Improving the architecture is essential - without it nobody would be using ARM today. An ARM2 cannot compete with MIPS or any other modern CPU. So the goal is to compete, not to stifle competition. There is a lot of competition in the 32-bit space, and even within the ARM community there is fierce competition.
The patents are there to protect the investment and clearly don't lock out competition - they just stop cloners.
While ARM2 has been superseded by later processors, I don't think it is useless and not wortwhile to copy. Granted, it can not compete with the later ARM processors, but it is smaller, so it could be useful for embedded or low-cost handheld designs (or something like the $100 laptop). And there is a lot of software (from the Archimedes homecomputer) that can run on ARM2.
I'm not saying people would rush to do it as soon as the patents run out, but I wouldn't rule the possibility out.
It would be relatively easy to make an ARM2 equivalent indeed. With a modern process it would be as fast as an ARM7. Of course without Thumb it would it would need 50% more flash, so ARM7 has the area advantage. Then there is Cortex-M3...
A StrongARM equivalent would be a lot more interesting, but it has to avoid the more recent MMU and cache patents. Even so, a
64MByte address space is pretty limiting for a $100 laptop...
Also it's not obvious to me that designing your own ARM would be cheaper than licensing (the development cost of a core is spread over many licensees). It only makes sense for very high volumes as you avoid the royalties. I don't rule it out entirely - I can see it done as a free FPGA core for example.
I'm not sure that is completely true - there's plenty of mileage in the ARM7 yet and I'll bet there will still be plenty of demand for it for the remaining life of the patent and beyond.
Sure there are newer cores taking off but they are linked to phones and PDAs and the question of longevity of those parts will keep designers in the security of the established ARM7 lines.
I'm not trying to sound stupid (but we all do what we do best), but if the core "does not matter" then why did you change? I guess the answer is you are moving to an FPGA or possibly even an ASIC?
I think your statement is a bit overbroad. Of course the CPU core does matter. But the requirements on the core are thinks like speed, support, etc., that many CPUs will meet. Then the choice becomes about selection in the other areas to narrow it down to a chip. At the top of this list are the peripherals which is what you are saying is the main consideration. Certainly it depends on your application. You just said you were changing the core in spite of the fact that you now have to change all your peripherals!
I am pretty sure I have seen 8051 chips with Ethernet. But I doubt that you considered them as useful devices in your initial design. You wanted the higher MIPS of the ARM and the greater flexibility in finding parts from multiple vendors with a wide selection of peripherals.
BTW, when you say you are using the same OS and compiler, do you mean the exact same tools or new tools from the same vendors? I don't know of any tool providers that bundle NIOS2 and ARM in the same package. Just curious, which tools are you using?
And while you work on your marketing plan someone else applies for the same patent (which is not unusual) you are left out in the cold. I believe it is pretty universal advice to apply early for patents.
Just the opposite. Most IP can not be protected by patents. Only inventions can be patented. That is why all the IP companies use encrypted libraries and licences to protect their IP.
Yes, that is likely true, except that I don't see that the ARM2 was so wildly successful. I would say it was the ARM7/9 that gave ARM the big boost that is making the ARM a commodity device.
So Xilinx does not sell chips? What about the other hundreds of fabless semi companies? Your facts are wrong and so your conclusions are wrong.
BTW, if patents are so much more important to ARM than Intel, why does Intel have so many patents? Not only on their chips, but on many aspects of making chips!!! Your logic just does not wash.
Yes, they say it and they do it! Atmel has some half dozen new ARM chips coming out this quarter. Philips is introducing new ARM chips continuously. ST Micro has a whole new family of ARM7 chips this quarter. The list goes on....
I don't know your licensing numbers, but I know to license an ARM7 you have to pay a large, up front fee along with a per chip fee. You only pay the up front fee once, so it is natural for the ARM7 license fees to drop as a product matures. But your numbers don't actually say the ARM7 license fees are dropping. They say they are a smaller part of the total company revenue.
The odd thing is that when I spoke with LM about it they did not say they were going to a 180 nm process like everyone else. They plan to intro a new family on the same 250 nm process, but with lower power and then intro a new family in 130 nm late in the year. I have not been able to get any new info on this so they may be slipping on their schedule.
You didn't read the entire sentence. That is what I mean by lockout. They stop the competitors from duplicating the product in terms of the ISA. No one can produce an ARM7 without violating a patent.
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