Intel's "cripple AMD" function

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by jrockway on Sunday January 03, 2010 @02:54PM (#1028991)

Sounds like AMD should just start setting the vendor string to "GenuineIntel", then. (This is something like the "like Mozilla" in every user agent string. If dumb software is going to do dumb tests, and you need to fool the dumb test to get your interoperability.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by rbanffy on Sunday January 03, 2010 @02:57PM (#1028999)

Better yet: make it writable.

That way the OS could change it per process/thread/context and the code would be happy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by wmf on Sunday January 03, 2010 @03:56PM (#1029122)

VIA has a writable vendor string which they have used to reveal this type of shenanigans in the past.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by rbanffy on Sunday January 03, 2010 @11:17PM (#1029750)

I always liked those guys. The über-486 Centaur built was briiliant design and out-of-the-box thinking from top to bottom.

Weren't the VIAs able to trounce Xeons in some crypto stuff?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by wmf on Sunday January 03, 2010 @11:48PM (#1029780)

Weren't the VIAs able to trounce Xeons in some crypto stuff?

Yes, since they had crypto instructions and nobody else did. Now I would expect Westmere to be faster.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by spicyj on Sunday January 03, 2010 @07:29PM (#1029396)

From the end of the article:

It is possible to change the CPUID of AMD processors by using the AMD virtualization instructions. I hope that somebody will volunteer to make a program for this purpose. This will make it easy for anybody to check if their benchmark is fair and to improve the performance of software compiled with the Intel compiler on AMD processors.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by dbz on Sunday January 03, 2010 @04:58PM (#1029207)

That idea is flawed because putting that string will make it optimize for an Intel chip, which will be worse than optimizing for an AMD chip because even though the compiler chooses the worst "optimized" option, it is still optimizing FOR that chip. -> The AMD optimization is optimized -But the Intel optimization is extra optimized (but not optimized for AM- only for itself).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by djcapelis on Monday January 04, 2010 @12:48AM (#1029854)

Yes and no. I'm fairly certain that often the optimizations will be better than the fallback codepath in practice. This is especially true if you note that this is defeating the check for the vendor id, not defeating a lot of the other checks the dispatcher does.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by loudtiger on Sunday January 03, 2010 @03:52PM (#1029117)

sounds like the Pre and iTunes. haha.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by pbhjpbhj on Sunday January 03, 2010 @05:13PM (#1029232)

That would be passing off / trademark infringement FWIW.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by pwmanagerdied on Sunday January 03, 2010 @05:59PM (#1029297)

No it wouldn't. All else aside, if this were the case every browser for the past decade would have been sued for including "Mozillla" and/or "MSIE" in their user-agent strings.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by pbhjpbhj on Monday January 04, 2010 @06:52PM (#1031495)

The important point is whether the mark is being abused as a false indication of the origin of the goods. In the case of UA strings this is plainly not the case (now). Vendor IDs are still considered to be indicative of the vendor - such an objection could be avoided by a disclaimer but this may yet not be enough if vendor-id were the common method to determine origin.

Of course their are rules against using as a TM something that is not indicative of origin (generic names of products &c.) and so if a name were needed for interoperability purposes then it could well be argued for free use.

I perhaps trolled slightly. Mea culpa.

As for Chrome browser identifying as Safari, I think not, what does Help > About say.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by djcapelis on Monday January 04, 2010 @12:53AM (#1029856)

Well, it's somewhat unclear since "GenuineIntel" and "Intel" are not quite the same. I'm betting a good lawyer could make the case that the first explicitly seeks to confuse the user and thus dilutes the trademark. It would be interesting to see this play out in court though. I wonder if the judge could actually tell them that by using their trademark in a technical sense like this, perhaps that would cause dilution itself.

As always, with the law it's a bit more complex than it might seem.

Also note that most browser UAs explicitly states "like X."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Intel's "cripple AMD" function by dangrossman on Sunday January 03, 2010 @08:54PM (#1029527)

Chrome identifies itself as Safari, and we know how protective Apple is of its trademarks.

[ Parent | on HN ]