Mike Harrison wrote:
>
> >C'mon guys, you can sue Scenix, but you won't have enough fingers to
> >plug
> >all the holes. If the technology is within reach of a small company like
> >Scenix, others will follow.
> Now I've seen some info on the new PIC16C1xx range, this action makes
> more sense - Scenix were targetting high-speed I/O applications, which
> is one of the major changes in the new PICs. The uncertainty caused by
> this action will make people hold off from using Scenix until it is
> resolved (would YOU design-in Scenix now ?), by which time it may be
You hit the nail slap bang on the head there...

> too late. I can't really see what's patentable about the PIC
> architecture - they just did it first & cheap, and it could have been
> done in one of several ways with the same performance.

You should see the patents that Mchip hold. Brownout, Power-up timer
etc.
I think this is probably what Mchip is sueing for. Whilst the Harvard
architecture doesn't seem patentable (I'm probably wrong!), Mchip made
sure they stopped others from using pipelineing etc.

I just hope that whatever Scenix did to get 100Mips out of a flash chip,
is protected by the same patent system that prevents Scenix from using
on-chip brownout protection.

--
Friendly Regards

Tjaart van der Walt
mailto:tjaart@wasp.co.za
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