-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick O'Keefe Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 2:31 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
On Tue, 5 Dec 2006 21:06:53 -0600, Phil Sidler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <sniP Sounds to me like you could now be sued for using the old technique of writing (E)STAE routines to emulate instructions not avalable on your model processor. Or maybe even macros that replace based instructions with relative instructions. Duplicate the behavior of an IBM instruction and you can get sued. <snip> I was just wondering, who owns/owned the patent that covered AMDAHL's FAM (Fast Assist Mode)? It was a quasi hardware/software system that allowed the Hypervisor (MDF) to recognize a PIC 1 at the DOMAIN (LPAR to IBM types) and pass that immediately to the "emulated" OPCODE table (which was a 2 level look up for the double byte op codes). But WAIT, isn't that how VM/370 handled things (PRE IEF/SIE)? So any patent there would have to have expired. And the idea of MACROs being used -- well, on the S/360-20 we had BAL and BALR macros that generated BAS and BASR (16 bit registers, no where to save the "LINK" data). That was done BEFORE software patents were allowed. It would be very interesting indeed to know what the patent(s) are IBM is claiming infringement on. And it will be VERY interesting to see what the US Supreme Court does with this patent challenge they are going to "hear". Should they change the definition of "obviousness"... Later, Steve Thompson ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
