While everyone is lauding Microsoft’s efforts towards making its Windows 10 operating system capable of running on ARM-based processors, there are some competitors who aren’t exactly charmed by its success. Intel is disgruntled over the adoption of the x86 architecture, which was invented by them, in an emulated form by the Redmond giant.
The said passive-aggressive feelings of the chipmaker were made public, of sudden, in the blog post about Intel’s 40th anniversary of the world’s first x86 microprocessor — the 8086. You won’t even expect the conversation to take an urgent turn, pointing fingers at other technology giants when the whole blog post feels like the company is making us take a trip down memory lane — when the computers weren’t smarter than us. It has now warned Microsoft to tread lightly else a patent infringement lawsuit could be in store for them.
Talking about the same, the company’s chief lawyer Stephen Rodgers and Intel Labs Director Richard A. Uhlig in a statement said:
There have been reports that some companies may try to emulate Intel’s proprietary x86 ISA without Intel’s authorization. Emulation is not a new technology, and Transmeta was notably the last company to claim to have produced a compatible x86 processor using emulation (“code morphing”) techniques.
The chipmaker’s tone jumps from being merry and talking about the success of x86 architecture over the past forty years to going out on a limb and sending hints of a potential lawsuit against Microsoft and Qualcomm. Intel doesn’t name any names and talks in code but one can easily understand what the company is exactly speaking about. With regards to the same, the blog post reads,
Only time will tell if new attempts to emulate Intel’s x86 ISA will meet a different fate. Intel welcomes lawful competition, and we are confident that Intel’s microprocessors, which have been specifically optimized to implement Intel’s x86 ISA for almost four decades.
We do not welcome unlawful infringement of our patents, and we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel’s intellectual property rights.
As for Microsoft, the company has been working on porting Windows 10 on ARM-based devices for quite some time and won’t let the said opportunity go away so easily. There is presently no word on how it plans to respond to Intel’s claims and we’ve contacted Redmond to learn more about its direction for the ambitious project. It has already signed up hardware partners, Lenovo, ASUS as well as HP, to develop Qualcomm Snapdragon 835-powered Windows 10 PCs.
