News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google developing own CPUs for Chromebook laptops by Someone on Saturday October 02, 2021 @06:22PM (#28732641)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Licensing:

“x86-64/AMD64 was solely developed by AMD. AMD holds patents on techniques used in AMD64; those patents must be licensed from AMD in order to implement AMD64. Intel entered into a cross-licensing agreement with AMD, licensing to AMD their patents on existing x86 techniques, and licensing from AMD their patents on techniques used in x86-64. In 2009, AMD and Intel settled several lawsuits and cross-licensing disagreements, extending their cross-licensing agreements.”

⇒ I think only Intel and AMD currently can freely implement x64.

There’s also https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-sti...:

“However, there have been reports that some companies may try to emulate Intel’s proprietary x86 ISA without Intel’s authorization. Emulation is not a new technology, and Transmeta was notably the last company to claim to have produced a compatible x86 processor using emulation (“code morphing”) techniques. Intel enforced patents relating to SIMD instruction set enhancements against Transmeta’s x86 implementation even though it used emulation.”

That was seen as a message to Microsoft (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...)

Re:Google developing own CPUs for Chromebook laptops by Dylan16807 on Saturday October 02, 2021 @07:23PM (#28733055)
It was a message to Microsoft in 2017. The patents for x86-64 and SSE2 should have all expired since then. I don't think most software needs SSE3/4/AVX.
Re:Google developing own CPUs for Chromebook laptops by Koshkin on Saturday October 02, 2021 @09:29PM (#28733769)
Maybe does not “need” but definitely “wants” - using these as part of code optimization is quite common.