Intel working on Arctic Sound discrete GPU for gamers

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Arctic Islands was apparently the code name for the RX400 series,so Arctic Sound sounds more of an AMD inspired code name,as Sound I assume in this case is meant to be a large sea or ocean inlet.

[ik9000]

Arctic Islands was apparently the code name for the RX400 series,so Arctic Sound sounds more of an AMD inspired code name,as Sound I assume in this case is meant to be a large sea or ocean inlet.

ah, that makes a bit more sense. So long as it's not taken too literally and designed to periodically freeze up completely for months on end. That could get quite annoying.

[ohmaheid]

AMD will be looking any hardware through a microscope to see if Intel has been naughty, when and if released!

AMD and Intel have an extensive patent cross licensing deal which almost certainly covers anything done here. Also, AMD has a technical lead in graphics and you don't stay at (well, near in this case) the front by looking over your shoulder at what the losers are up to.

Well, which is it? 'Cross licensing deal' or a 'technical lead in graphics' You can't have both. If there is a cross-licensing deal, that would neccessarily negate any technical lead.

[kompukare]

Well, which is it? 'Cross licensing deal' or a 'technical lead in graphics' You can't have both. If there is a cross-licensing deal, that would neccessarily negate any technical lead.

And why not?

All the cross licensing deal means for Intel is that they could use techniques covered by AMD patents, but those patents do not tell them everything they would need to know to successfully implement the technique.

Let's be generous to such a patent (probably very generous), and imagine that the patent has the kind of detail you might find in a good indepth technical review for instance of CPU architecture. Such articles can be quite detailed filled with things like cache topology, branch predictors, memory controller timings, etc.

But even armed with that, it is hard to imagine you could just hire 1000s of CPU engineers and duplicate the design. I'm sure most ideas which might end up in a design and which patent, have then had far more time and resource invested in them at the implementation stage than when they were though up.

Or I guess you could imagine it all being a 3-step process:

1. design/plan
2. implement
3. debug

And while a cross licensing deal might you #1, most of the work was in steps #2 and #3.

[DanceswithUnix]

Well, which is it? 'Cross licensing deal' or a 'technical lead in graphics' You can't have both. If there is a cross-licensing deal, that would neccessarily negate any technical lead.

There is a big gap between being able to use a patentable idea, and being able to come up with a patentable idea. Whether Intel copied graphics generation N is a moot point when AMD should internally be architecting generation N+3, implementing N+2 and debugging N+1 for release.