gloriouscowgloriouscow@oldbytes.space
Nov 11, 2026, 3:02 AM@fuzzyfuzzyfungus i'm trying to find the actual verbiage of the 1976 patent agreement
Replies
- gloriouscowgloriouscow@oldbytes.spaceNov 11, 2026, 3:08 AM
here we go:
https://www.ardent-tool.com/CPU/docs/MPR/19920708/060901.pdf
seems they would have saved themselves a lot of trouble by adding "...Written before 1977" to that clause
- gloriouscowgloriouscow@oldbytes.spaceNov 11, 2026, 3:09 AM
another possibility is that they actually did intend to grant AMD a perpetual license in the first place but then tried to weasel out of it.
- gloriouscowgloriouscow@oldbytes.spaceNov 11, 2026, 3:12 AM
AMD was an official second-source manufacturer for the 8088 and 80286 so it clearly wasn't a problem for those particular chips
fuzzyfuzzyfungusfuzzyfuzzyfungus@cyberplace.socialNov 11, 2026, 3:45 AM@gloriouscow I wonder if there were some real iAPX 432 optimists involved.
The contract still seems weirdly vague; but that seems like the least baffling explanation for why they might have seen a fairly broad license to AMD as strategically narrow in 1976; only later attempting to make it explicit that, even if x86 had turned out not to be temporary, AMD was still supposed to be.
- gloriouscowgloriouscow@oldbytes.spaceNov 11, 2026, 3:51 AM
it's interesting that it points out that the agreement predates the 8088 which was the first intel CPU to even contain microcode, so perhaps it wasn't even on their radar.
AMD didn't have to copy the 8088 and 80286 as they were second-source manufacturers and so Intel just gave them the die masks, everything soured when AMD wanted to make a 287 which for whatever reason Intel hadn't hired them to produce
- gloriouscowgloriouscow@oldbytes.spaceNov 11, 2026, 3:52 AM
@fuzzyfuzzyfungus the whole second-source CPU thing was, from what I understand, an external requirement of IBM, who wanted to make sure there was not going to be supply issues getting CPUs for their PC products.
