At 1:41 AM 12/20/1996, Scott V. McGuire wrote:
On Thu, 19 Dec 1996, Peter Hendrickson Wrote:
The manufacturer of the encrypted-code processor would protect its instruction set using intellectual property law. Given the high price of a fab, it is entirely feasible to stop anybody from building a new architecture which can execute the code about as fast as the encrypting-code processor.
It seems to me that this is where this scheme would be broken. Have intellectual property laws been (successfully) used in this way?
I don't know, but I bet it would be possible to arrange if there was support for it. Or, maybe the instruction set itself remains a trade secret. Sure, it could leak out, but aren't there laws against industrial espionage? (If the instruction set was secret, the manufacturer might have to provide a compilation service.)
And even if so, would they be enforced in all the countries where the chips might be fabricated?
Yes, if the laws exist they would be easy to enforce. What does a state-of-the-art fab cost now? $5 billion? $10 billion? I was generous when I said "G-7". Which countries can really compete in this market? The U.S. and Japan, I believe. There is no reason to rule out extra-legal pressure, either. The USG appears to have played the policeman in supporting the DRAM market in an informal way. It would be very easy to have a chat with the Japanese government about the importance of stopping software piracy. Peter Hendrickson ph@netcom.com