They don't want to produce it themselves, they want to sell it as a license. I read(or heard) somewhere.

In the early talks Ivan said they intend to produce it themselves.

I concur. Been watching the videos for the past month and he repeatedly states that they are aiming at producing and selling chips, not IP.

AFAIK, their goal is to produce novel patents.

Despite not being a HW expert, I've watched each one of these videos carefully. (Whenever a new one comes out it's like Christmas to me.) Ivan has been pretty consistent on this message each time this topic comes up. They're being careful to protect their work before they disclose it, yes, but they have always said that they're in this to produce hardware. If you've encountered something that contradicts this, I'd like a citation.

Their goal was to produce chips. Then the America Invents Act was signed and they were forced to become much more patent-focused in the short term or forever abandon any hope of patent protection for their works.

Don’t keep your hopes high. The first video is 4 years old.

To be fair, these guys aren't Intel or even AMD or ARM - they're a small team with limited funding. I'm not going to be shocked of Mill themselves never releases production silicon, but worst case their novel ideas will only be under patent lock-and-key for a period of time - someone else will have the opportunity to make use of them eventually.

With that said, I'd love to see these things come off a fab line someday - there's a lot of potential in the ideas behind the Mill architecture, whether they'll pan out or not is to be seen, but if they fail I'd rather see another Itanic than to never make it to market in the first place.

Well, I don't think it's possible to design a novel general purpose processor overnight, so I'm not surprised that it's been four years coming. On the other hand listening to this talk I walked away with the impression that they're further away from making real chips (even engineering samples) than the last talk.

Whatever the case, I do hope they make it to market but maybe that's just my own morbid curiosity.

I personally totally keep my hopes high. I just don't hold my breath.

IIRC at the time of the first video they had already worked on it for around a decade. Personally I'm hoping that just means they have enough stamina to see it through and not that they'll never finish.