Intel Forced to Remove "Cripple AMD" Function from Compiler?

Bill Davidsen wrote:
I read an interesting post on this which said that the logic is this: if
the CPU is Intel, the flags are checked, because the meaning of each bit
is known. If not, the meaning of some bits as used by other vendors is
not identical to Intel usage. Therefore, Intel chose to not use any
vector stuff beyond mmx (or sse) rather than try to handle other
vendor's use. Clearly you can call this an excuse, and Intel probably
could have checked for at least some of the other vendors, assuming that
within a vendor the bits are stable.

Yes, I can see them using that excuse too. The major performance
enhancing features at question here, such as the SSE instructions are
not in conflict.

Anyways, this is not just a matter for the FTC to take up, this is also
a part of Intel & AMD's private settlement: Intel has agreed to give up
this practice _from now on_. The FTC however is looking at it from a
consumer point of view, and it feels it has the right to ask Intel to
compensate customers who bought Intel's compilers without knowing about
this in the past.

I know there is/was one CPU vendor who used the bits Intel classified as
either "unused" or "RFU" to mean something, but I don't remember what.
There was code in some program I used which checked that. For modern
32/64 bit CPUs I doubt that's an issue, but I don't really know that
everyone uses bits the way Intel does.

It's certainly possible, but AMD used to use flags way outside of
Intel's flags functions. For example, for Intel-style flags you might
have had to put $1000 into a register, and for AMD-style flags you would
have needed to put $8000 into the same register. When checking for Intel
features on AMD processors, you simply used the Intel values and you got
back the Intel results.

As it turns out, now that AMD is responsible for the 64-bit x86
instructions, Intel now supports the AMD-style flags too. That's because
a lot of the 64-bit features come from the AMD flags.

Vendors in Pentium days (from memory), AMD, Cyrix, Transmeta, SiS, and
at least one other. Hope someone remembers this stuff more clearly.

Those were a bygone era, even before the CPUID was available. In those
days, you had to use indirect method to figure out which processor you
were running on, even within the Intel stable. You'd use things like
self-modifying code to measure the size of instruction prefetch queues
which might have been different between processor families, etc. I
remember writing such routines in assembly myself. Once the CPUID
instruction was introduced this all went away.

Cyrix made a Pentium-class processor, which didn't support the Pentium
instruction set instructions. So for all intents and purposes, the Cyrix
looked just like a really fast 486.

In any case, if that claim is true, it's still a very dubious reason to
avoid a more thorough check.

FTC is talking about making Intel license x86 to anybody who wants to
pay for it. I am figuring that this is the start of a "de jure" rather
than a "de facto" standards-based x86 instruction set. AMD will have to
throw in the x64 instructions too.

So we might actually see x86 processors from Nvidia or others if this
ruling goes through.

Yousuf Khan

On Jan 11, 3:52*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:


FTC is talking about making Intel license x86 to anybody who wants to
pay for it. I am figuring that this is the start of a "de jure" rather
than a "de facto" standards-based x86 instruction set. AMD will have to
throw in the x64 instructions too.

So we might actually see x86 processors from Nvidia or others if this
ruling goes through.

You need to get a grip, Yousuf.

http://www.internetnews.com/hardware...ys+Analyst.htm

Intel must not have given enough money to Obama's campaign, but none
of this overreaching is going to fly.

Robert.

Robert Myers wrote:
[...]
Listen. I'm one of the bluntest people on the face of the earth. I
don't do with BS, not yours, not Intel's, not anybody's. If you want
to find out how blunt I can be, eventually you will.

Oh, I'm so affraid. ROTFL!


Some weenie at Intel did what was easiest, or some manager at Intel
told a weenie to do it some way or other.

Nonsense. Making it that way was not the easiest way, as "GenuineIntel"
string check is a superflous one.

Yet it's conceivalbe that someone made it that way without deeper
consideration. What is unconceivalbe is that Intel kept the thing for
many years in face of complains. Even worse, in later versions they
removed the option to bypass the "feature".

Get a life, Yousuf. There
was no board meeting about this.

If that was just what you try make it was they would have fixed it. It
might begin as innocent mistake, but refusal to fix it promotes it into
deliberate action.

Wheteher it was delibarate from the beginning or they just deliberately
didn't fix it, it doesn't change the outcome.


I'm sick of your finger-pointing. Push hard enough, and I'll
speculate as to where all this moral certainty comes from, any you
won't like it one little bit.

Uh, oh.


Bottom line, if you had your way: Yousuf happy, lawyers rich, industry
devastated. Good job.
The industry is already a moribund devastated industry ever since Intel
took up its position as the Mammoth that stands on this ground. PCs have
not evolved much since the 80's. With the Mammoth moved out of the way,
new life can take hold now.

That's not spin. That's delusion.

And who is talking about delusion? LOL!


--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang
--
http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels)

On Jan 12, 8:03*am, Sebastian Kaliszewski
wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:

[...]

Listen. *I'm one of the bluntest people on the face of the earth. *I
don't do with BS, not yours, not Intel's, not anybody's. *If you want
to find out how blunt I can be, eventually you will.

Oh, I'm so affraid. ROTFL!

I wasn't addressing you. I'll never forget you as making one of the
most unintentionally funny posts ever on Usenet--announcing that there
was no need to worry about your managing risk, as you worked for
financial clients--just as the world of finance was bringing on a
disastrous worldwide meltdown because of its fecklessness in managing
risk.

Some weenie at Intel did what was easiest, or some manager at Intel
told a weenie to do it some way or other.

Nonsense. Making it that way was not the easiest way, as "GenuineIntel"
string check is a superflous one.

Yet it's conceivalbe that someone made it that way without deeper
consideration. What is unconceivalbe is that Intel kept the thing for
many years in face of complains. Even worse, in later versions they
removed the option to bypass the "feature".

No one, least of all me, is claiming that Intel is an innocent babe in
the woods. Every individual and every business is consciously or
unconsciously biased toward decisions and actions that favor their own
needs, sometimes to the great detriment of others. Intel got caught
on this one, and, as I said in my very first post on the issue, they
deserve to get burned, if only for being so arrogant as to leave off a
disclaimer.

Get a life, Yousuf. *There
was no board meeting about this.

If that was just what you try make it was they would have fixed it. It
might begin as innocent mistake, but refusal to fix it promotes it into
deliberate action.

Wheteher it was delibarate from the beginning or they just deliberately
didn't fix it, it doesn't change the outcome.

I'm sick of your finger-pointing. *Push hard enough, and I'll
speculate as to where all this moral certainty comes from, any you
won't like it one little bit.

Uh, oh.

Moral thinking is culturally-bound. An astonishing fraction of
Americans pay lip service to the (false) notion of universal moral
absolutes, but, by and large, the moral landscape of the US is
pragmatic, not absolute. Introducing absolute moral considerations
into a discussion about commerce as if they belonged there isn't
unheard of in this culture, but it is largely foreign to it. The
question is not: would God approve, but, was there a contract, real or
implied, and was it fulfilled or not. In this case, Intel created an
implied contract by the promises it made for its compiler and it
failed to fulfill the terms of the contract. Happens every day in
commercial transactions large and small. End of story.



Bottom line, if you had your way: Yousuf happy, lawyers rich, industry
devastated. Good job.
The industry is already a moribund devastated industry ever since Intel
took up its position as the Mammoth that stands on this ground. PCs have
not evolved much since the 80's. With the Mammoth moved out of the way,
new life can take hold now.

That's not spin. *That's delusion.

And who is talking about delusion? LOL!

The semiconductor industry is "mature." That's why it's moribund, not
because of anything Intel has done or not done. That all industries
go through a cycle of growth and maturation is widely-accepted
business school logic.

Robert.

Robert Myers wrote:
On Jan 12, 8:03 am, Sebastian Kaliszewski
wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:

[...]

Listen. I'm one of the bluntest people on the face of the earth. I
don't do with BS, not yours, not Intel's, not anybody's. If you want
to find out how blunt I can be, eventually you will.
Oh, I'm so affraid. ROTFL!

I wasn't addressing you. I'll never forget you as making one of the
most unintentionally funny posts ever on Usenet--announcing that there
was no need to worry about your managing risk, as you worked for
financial clients--just as the world of finance was bringing on a
disastrous worldwide meltdown because of its fecklessness in managing
risk.

You didn't address me. So what? Your statement is laughable regardless
of that. Even more laughable as in many parts of the world "blunt" means
intelectually impaired...

Then, first you lie about what I wrote. And I am (and was) right, as it
was not software bug (behaviour inconsistent with specification) which
caused any trouble. It was in fact the crap you insisted they should do
which caused trouble (trying to estimate risk which they had no way to
estimate, and then relying on that fatally too low estimate in their
operations -- its better to ignore such risk rather than trying to
capitalize on failed grossly too low estimate).
Then, the aforementioned financial client weathered the crisis in a good
shape. By the way: their stock value suprassed that of CitiBank by that
time.

[...]
Bottom line, if you had your way: Yousuf happy, lawyers rich, industry
devastated. Good job.
The industry is already a moribund devastated industry ever since Intel
took up its position as the Mammoth that stands on this ground. PCs have
not evolved much since the 80's. With the Mammoth moved out of the way,
new life can take hold now.
That's not spin. That's delusion.
And who is talking about delusion? LOL!

The semiconductor industry is "mature." That's why it's moribund, not
because of anything Intel has done or not done. That all industries
go through a cycle of growth and maturation is widely-accepted
business school logic.

I was addressing your earlier expressed visions how the software world
should be.

\SK
--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang
--
http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels)

On Jan 13, 4:25*am, Sebastian Kaliszewski
wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:
On Jan 12, 8:03 am, Sebastian Kaliszewski
wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:

[...]

Listen. *I'm one of the bluntest people on the face of the earth. *I
don't do with BS, not yours, not Intel's, not anybody's. *If you want
to find out how blunt I can be, eventually you will.
Oh, I'm so affraid. ROTFL!

I wasn't addressing you. *I'll never forget you as making one of the
most unintentionally funny posts ever on Usenet--announcing that there
was no need to worry about your managing risk, as you worked for
financial clients--just as the world of finance was bringing on a
disastrous worldwide meltdown because of its fecklessness in managing
risk.

You didn't address me. So what? Your statement is laughable regardless
of that. Even more laughable as in many parts of the world "blunt" means
intelectually impaired...

I don't live in many parts of the world. I live in the US and English
is my first language. The prevalence of English in many parts of the
world is in part due to the extensiveness of the British Empire, but
it is mostly the result of post World War II American dominance of
world-wide commerce. You might be better off trying to show off your
cleverness in some other field than in something that isn't your first
language.

That your ego is still wounded from our first encounter is all too
evident.

Then, first you lie about what I wrote. And I am (and was) right, as it
was not software bug (behaviour inconsistent with specification) which
caused any trouble. It was in fact the crap you insisted they should do
which caused trouble (trying to estimate risk which they had no way to
estimate, and then relying on that fatally too low estimate in their
operations -- its better to ignore such risk rather than trying to
capitalize on failed grossly too low estimate).
Then, the aforementioned financial client weathered the crisis in a good
shape. By the way: their stock value suprassed that of CitiBank by that
time.

You made a general statement (My clients know how to manage risk
because they are in finance) that was not just generally, but
howlingly disproven by actual events. That you now want to
reformulate your statement (MY clients are successful and smart
because they lucked out in the last catastrophe) only confirms the
ridiculousness of what you first claimed. That you believe that
performance through a single crisis proves anything at all puts you in
a league with people who believe that a particular hurricane season is
proof of global warming.

Now you are trying to educate me about English while at the same time
only proving more thoroughly that your understanding of probability
and risk is at least as superficial as that of the general world of
finance.

[...]

Bottom line, if you had your way: Yousuf happy, lawyers rich, industry
devastated. Good job.
The industry is already a moribund devastated industry ever since Intel
took up its position as the Mammoth that stands on this ground. PCs have
not evolved much since the 80's. With the Mammoth moved out of the way,
new life can take hold now.
That's not spin. *That's delusion.
And who is talking about delusion? LOL!

The semiconductor industry is "mature." *That's why it's moribund, not
because of anything Intel has done or not done. *That all industries
go through a cycle of growth and maturation is widely-accepted
business school logic.

I was addressing your earlier expressed visions how the software world
should be.

It is widely agreed that there is no silver bullet, but we could be
doing much better than we are now and the world would be much better
for it.

Since the world of software is dominated by overconfident snots like
you, I see very little chance of improvement, near or far term, but
that reality has little to do with whether we could be doing better or
not.

--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang

Indeed.

Robert.

Robert Myers wrote:
On Jan 12, 8:03 am, Sebastian Kaliszewski

Moral thinking is culturally-bound. An astonishing fraction of
Americans pay lip service to the (false) notion of universal moral
absolutes, but, by and large, the moral landscape of the US is
pragmatic, not absolute. Introducing absolute moral considerations
into a discussion about commerce as if they belonged there isn't
unheard of in this culture, but it is largely foreign to it. The
question is not: would God approve, but, was there a contract, real or
implied, and was it fulfilled or not. In this case, Intel created an
implied contract by the promises it made for its compiler and it
failed to fulfill the terms of the contract. Happens every day in
commercial transactions large and small. End of story.

You mean like it's immoral for a home owner to walk away from an underwater
mortgage, but not immoral for the bank to sell the mortgage knowing it will
enter foreclosure?

Bottom line, if you had your way: Yousuf happy, lawyers rich, industry
devastated. Good job.
The industry is already a moribund devastated industry ever since Intel
took up its position as the Mammoth that stands on this ground. PCs have
not evolved much since the 80's. With the Mammoth moved out of the way,
new life can take hold now.
That's not spin. That's delusion.
And who is talking about delusion? LOL!

The semiconductor industry is "mature." That's why it's moribund, not
because of anything Intel has done or not done. That all industries
go through a cycle of growth and maturation is widely-accepted
business school logic.

Clearly not in this group. :-(

On Jan 13, 6:32*pm, Bill Davidsen wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:

Moral thinking is culturally-bound. *An astonishing fraction of
Americans pay lip service to the (false) notion of universal moral
absolutes, but, by and large, the moral landscape of the US is
pragmatic, not absolute. *Introducing absolute moral considerations
into a discussion about commerce as if they belonged there isn't
unheard of in this culture, but it is largely foreign to it. *The
question is not: would God approve, but, was there a contract, real or
implied, and was it fulfilled or not. *In this case, Intel created an
implied contract by the promises it made for its compiler and it
failed to fulfill the terms of the contract. *Happens every day in
commercial transactions large and small. *End of story.

You mean like it's immoral for a home owner to walk away from an underwater
mortgage, but not immoral for the bank to sell the mortgage knowing it will
enter foreclosure?

Just so. People will claim that whatever is to their advantage, or,
in Yousuf's case, what suits his personal preferences, is what's
moral.

Robert.

Robert Myers wrote:
Listen. I'm one of the bluntest people on the face of the earth. I
don't do with BS, not yours, not Intel's, not anybody's. If you want
to find out how blunt I can be, eventually you will.
Oh, I'm so affraid. ROTFL!
I wasn't addressing you. I'll never forget you as making one of the
most unintentionally funny posts ever on Usenet--announcing that there
was no need to worry about your managing risk, as you worked for
financial clients--just as the world of finance was bringing on a
disastrous worldwide meltdown because of its fecklessness in managing
risk.
You didn't address me. So what? Your statement is laughable regardless
of that. Even more laughable as in many parts of the world "blunt" means
intelectually impaired...

I don't live in many parts of the world. I live in the US and English
is my first language. The prevalence of English in many parts of the
world is in part due to the extensiveness of the British Empire, but
it is mostly the result of post World War II American dominance of
world-wide commerce. You might be better off trying to show off your
cleverness in some other field than in something that isn't your first
language.

That your ego is still wounded from our first encounter is all too
evident.

ROTFL! It was not the first encounter to begin with. Neither would I care.


Then, first you lie about what I wrote. And I am (and was) right, as it
was not software bug (behaviour inconsistent with specification) which
caused any trouble. It was in fact the crap you insisted they should do
which caused trouble (trying to estimate risk which they had no way to
estimate, and then relying on that fatally too low estimate in their
operations -- its better to ignore such risk rather than trying to
capitalize on failed grossly too low estimate).
Then, the aforementioned financial client weathered the crisis in a good
shape. By the way: their stock value suprassed that of CitiBank by that
time.

You made a general statement (My clients know how to manage risk
because they are in finance)

It was not. It was about managing risk of software failures.

that was not just generally, but
howlingly disproven by actual events.

It was not, either. But it's apparently too multilevel for you to grasp.

That you now want to
reformulate your statement (MY clients are successful and smart
because they lucked out in the last catastrophe) only confirms the
ridiculousness of what you first claimed.

Nonsense. You apparently can't read what's got written. You only
extrapolate from your lack of clue. "Lucked out" is simply projection of
your imagination.

That you believe that
performance through a single crisis proves anything at all puts you in
a league with people who believe that a particular hurricane season is
proof of global warming.

Get your own advice. And get consistent. Your claims about financial
institutions risk management and crisis contradict your above statement.


Now you are trying to educate me about English while at the same time
only proving more thoroughly that your understanding of probability
and risk is at least as superficial as that of the general world of
finance.

ROTFL! First be consistent in what you talk about. Then buy a clue.
First one for free: risk estimation is just that (estimation) and
estimation might be over or under.


[...]
I was addressing your earlier expressed visions how the software world
should be.

It is widely agreed that there is no silver bullet, but we could be
doing much better than we are now and the world would be much better
for it.

Since the world of software is dominated by overconfident snots like
you, I see very little chance of improvement, near or far term, but
that reality has little to do with whether we could be doing better or
not.

You have little grasp of reality.

The wordld of software is as is because what you advocate is simply not
effective. It's plain simply better instead of spending money to bring
software error levels to your liking to spend them on something
productive. It only pays for itself in places where cost of failure is
extreme.

For example theft is at a significat levels in supermarts, yet
increasing security is simply more expensive than dealing with the fact
that some percentage of goods will get stolen. Similarily bank robberies
are pretty frequent in Europe (in major cities you have one bank robbery
every 5 days) yet as average amount stolen is less that one year wage of
a security person, it simply does not pay to increase security.

--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang

Indeed.

Yours is certainly of top notch quality.

\SK
--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang
--
http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels)

On Jan 14, 5:27*am, Sebastian Kaliszewski
wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:
Listen. *I'm one of the bluntest people on the face of the earth. *I
don't do with BS, not yours, not Intel's, not anybody's. *If you want
to find out how blunt I can be, eventually you will.
Oh, I'm so affraid. ROTFL!
I wasn't addressing you. *I'll never forget you as making one of the
most unintentionally funny posts ever on Usenet--announcing that there
was no need to worry about your managing risk, as you worked for
financial clients--just as the world of finance was bringing on a
disastrous worldwide meltdown because of its fecklessness in managing
risk.
You didn't address me. So what? Your statement is laughable regardless
of that. Even more laughable as in many parts of the world "blunt" means
intelectually impaired...

I don't live in many parts of the world. *I live in the US and English
is my first language. *The prevalence of English in many parts of the
world is in part due to the extensiveness of the British Empire, but
it is mostly the result of post World War II American dominance of
world-wide commerce. *You might be better off trying to show off your
cleverness in some other field than in something that isn't your first
language.

That your ego is still wounded from our first encounter is all too
evident.

ROTFL! It was not the first encounter to begin with. Neither would I care..

Then, first you lie about what I wrote. And I am (and was) right, as it
was not software bug (behaviour inconsistent with specification) which
caused any trouble. It was in fact the crap you insisted they should do
which caused trouble (trying to estimate risk which they had no way to
estimate, and then relying on that fatally too low estimate in their
operations -- its better to ignore such risk rather than trying to
capitalize on failed grossly too low estimate).
Then, the aforementioned financial client weathered the crisis in a good
shape. By the way: their stock value suprassed that of CitiBank by that
time.

You made a general statement (My clients know how to manage risk
because they are in finance)

It was not. It was about managing risk of software failures.

that was not just generally, but
howlingly disproven by actual events.

It was not, either. But it's apparently too multilevel for you to grasp.

That you now want to
reformulate your statement (MY clients are successful *and smart
because they lucked out in the last catastrophe) only confirms the
ridiculousness of what you first claimed.

Nonsense. You apparently can't read what's got written. You only
extrapolate from your lack of clue. "Lucked out" is simply projection of
your imagination.

That you believe that
performance through a single crisis proves anything at all puts you in
a league with people who believe that a particular hurricane season is
proof of global warming.

Get your own advice. And get consistent. Your claims about financial
institutions risk management and crisis contradict your above statement.



Now you are trying to educate me about English while at the same time
only proving more thoroughly that your understanding of probability
and risk is at least as superficial as that of the general world of
finance.

ROTFL! First be consistent in what you talk about. Then buy a clue.
First one for free: risk estimation is just that (estimation) and
estimation might be over or under.

The general problem here is that you fall into the same trap about
probability and statistics that nearly everyone does, and it's why the
idea of economic "science" is so appalling. The idea of computer
"science" is nearly as appalling.

Science relies on the ability to reproduce results by way of
experimentation. If an experiment fails to reproduce a result, it
might be because one or the other of the experiments was flawed in
some way. You can examine the apparatus and the data. You can try
again. Others can try again.

In economics, you can do no such thing. *Maybe* your clients did well
because they have better methods, or maybe they were just lucky.
There is absolutely no way to tell, and no experiment you can perform
to prove or disprove either hypothesis, because conditions in
economics are never going to be the same way twice on a macro scale.

If you had said that you understood probability and were confident of
your own methods of estimating risk, I've have had to admit that it's
you're field, you're closer to the action than I am, and you have to
live with the consequences of your own misjudgments.

Instead, you referred to the judgments of "experts"--your customers in
finance. The entire world of financial engineering and economic
"science" is on the defensive right now because the entire methodology
of estimating risks and placing financial bets failed on a grand
scale.

Even in catastrophe, there will be some winners. There will always be
winners and losers in finance, but the fact that one group happened to
be a winner in some particular situation proves nothing. That the
entire system nearly collapsed and *didn't* collapse only because of
extraordinary and morally questionable intervention is another
matter. In retrospect, as with a collapsed building, it's easy to see
the structural flaws, which is a different matter from bad luck.

The point is that the methods of risk estimation failed to identify
the structural flaws and that that failure itself appears to be
structural.

The general problem is that you can never know if you left something
out. That's true even in laboratory science, but if a completely
different group sets up another experiment and gets nearly the same
result, you have some confidence that you have science and not mere
coincidence.

Climate "science" has the same problem. We can't perform experiments
with weather and climate (at least not yet). Yet people are forever
looking at irreproducible subsets of data and claiming to draw
conclusions from them, just as you are looking at an irreproducible
subset of data and claiming to be able to draw conclusions from it.



[...]
I was addressing your earlier expressed visions how the software world
should be.

It is widely agreed that there is no silver bullet, but we could be
doing much better than we are now and the world would be much better
for it.

Since the world of software is dominated by overconfident snots like
you, I see very little chance of improvement, near or far term, but
that reality has little to do with whether we could be doing better or
not.

You have little grasp of reality.

The wordld of software is as is because what you advocate is simply not
effective. It's plain simply better instead of spending money to bring
software error levels to your liking to spend them on something
productive. It only pays for itself in places where cost of failure is
extreme.

For example theft is at a significat levels in supermarts, yet
increasing security is simply more expensive than dealing with the fact
that some percentage of goods will get stolen. Similarily bank robberies
are pretty frequent in Europe (in major cities you have one bank robbery
every 5 days) yet as average amount stolen is less that one year wage of
a security person, it simply does not pay to increase security.

The analogy is not a good one. If someone takes a loaf of bread and
doesn't pay for it, your entire loss is the cost of putting that loaf
of bread on the shelves. If someone cracks your credit card
processor's security, the potential loss is simply incalculable.

The problem with software reliability, just as with placing financial
bets, is that there is no way of foreseeing or even bounding the
possible costs of a mistake. That you continue to insist you can
place bounds on the possible losses exposes the shallowness of your
thinking.

People in the business whom I respect say things similar to what
you're saying, but they say it with regret and humility: we get crappy
software because no one is willing to pay for good software.

Robert.