On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote:
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.
That's probably why the Chinese have jumped on it (Godson/Loongson), not
that they worry excessively about licensing, but anyway.
Indeed. Not for domestic use, they don't, anyway.
But they *do* care about stuff they want to sell abroad... :?)
--
Liam Proven ? Profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at
gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at
hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508