On 4/27/06, William Chops Westfield wrote: > So you're explicitly soliciting pirated intellectual property? > AFAIK, Microchip hasn't licensed their chips to any second sources, > so any exact equivalents not from microchip are pretty much by > definition "stolen." I'm interested to hear the details about this intellectual property. What patents or copyrights are being violated if I do a clean room reverse engineering of the PICMicro in question, then start producing it as a second source? Until Intel started protecting themselves with patents (specifically the memory access patterns in the pentium chip) other chip makers were free to reverse engineer their chips and clone them. Of course this is different than simply analyzing the die and producing an exact copy - that breaks microchip's copyright. A clean room reverse engineering, though, could only break patents (many, if not most, of which could be worked around). The market isn't that big for clones in this segment. If you want cheap you get different 8-bit processor from China, or use a 4 bit processor (no flash! It's expensive!). If you want something that is second sourcable you use an 8051 or similar "old architecture" chip. If you don't care about pricing or availability then there's no need for a clone. Clone makers are getting in trouble for producing clones and then marking and selling them as if they were from microchip. I imagine there are legal clones that exist, but they aren't well documented. Typically you'd talk to your manufacturer and they'd make suggestions about parts they've used previously. Or you talk to an electronics broker based in asia. Perhaps a careful reading of the lawsuits microchip files. But if you really want *cheap* cheap you don't use microchip, or you use enough of them that the VP of sales takes you out for frequent business lunches. -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist