24 Mar
2010
24 Mar
'10
7:58 a.m.
Further, one
can design an mcs51-based chip without paying a dime to anyone...can't
exactly do that with ARM.
As I understand it, you can design a MIPS chip based on the published
specs and not have to pay any licensing fees. There was a patent on the
unaligned load/store instructions, but that expired in 2006 AIUI.