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Comment by cpuguy83 | Hacker News Reader

They can't make an x86 one because Intel holds the rights on it and only AMD has a license to do this (there is a history here).

Also I wouldn't be surprised if one actually could not build anything like M1 (at that power usage) w/ x86.... Intel certainly hasn't been able to.

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The history is actually pretty simple.

Originally it was because the US government requires a second source for any components and so Intel had to license it to somebody to supply the US government.

Then later AMD's 64 bit instructions became the standard, so Intel needed the license for the 64 bit extensions and AMD needed the x86 base and so they just decided to cross-license and call it good.

You seem to have not mentioned the lawsuit and clean room effort.

Which lawsuit? The mid-late 2000's one after all this history? Or the 1991 one that was about intel seeking ways to squeeze out AMD from it's license? The first one isn't really relevant to this and the second one could have been more direct but AMD having a license and then getting another later as part of the deal on x86-64 does allude to behind the scenes shenanigans.

There's actually a 3rd x86 license, that has changed hands quite a few times (Cyrix -> National Semiconductor -> Centaur(IDT) -> VIA -> Zhaoxin, I think, unless I missed a few transitions?)

There's also the https://opencores.org/projects/ao486 - the relevant patents on a 486-era design would have expired

The Pentium patents have expired too, and if we go by the usual 20-year expiry, then that would mean everything up to the Pentium III (1999) would be in the public domain. IANAL.

Patents have expired. That doesn't make it public domain.

Isn't the point of patents that instead of ideas being kept secret (and often vanishing when their inventors die) they are published in exchange for a limited time monopoly on their use? In that case when a patent expires it does indeed become public domain.

Public domain means no IP applies. Patents are only one kind of IP. There’s also copyrights, trademarks, etc.

Sure, Intel didn't have any serious patents on the 8080 but they did copyright the assembly language mnemonics. So the Z80 was 100% compatible at the binary level but had to use other names for the instructions. Same thing with trademarks.

What I was saying is that what is described in the patent text can be freely used after the patent expires.

and at least 2-3 other attempts at cloning I know of including Linus's Transmeta and the one I worked on

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