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Stolen designs

B

Brian

Jan 1, 1970
0
How many of you out here have ever discovered that another company had
stolen your designs? As a CM, I have seen it once, and as a hired gun I saw
it once on a complete product scale (although multiple products copied by
this company). I have seen teardowns done, but not cloned. I wonder how
prevalent this is.
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
How many of you out here have ever discovered that another company had
stolen your designs? As a CM, I have seen it once, and as a hired gun I saw
it once on a complete product scale (although multiple products copied by
this company). I have seen teardowns done, but not cloned. I wonder how
prevalent this is.

I once cloned (different design, functionally equivalent) a LeCroy
product, at the request of one of their customers, and Walter got
fairly annoyed. Next bid, they cut their price in half, so the
customer disqualified them "on technical grounds"!

And Scientific Instruments cloned one of my cryogenic signal
conditioners, but didn't do a good enough job to take much of our
sales away.

In niche markets like mine, it doesn't make sense for a company to
clone somebody else's product just so that they can start a price war
for half of a small market, so we pretty much try to keep out of one
another's way.

I hear that AMD might have once cloned somebody's CPU architecture.

John
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
How many of you out here have ever discovered that another company had
stolen your designs? As a CM, I have seen it once, and as a hired gun I saw
it once on a complete product scale (although multiple products copied by
this company). I have seen teardowns done, but not cloned. I wonder how
prevalent this is.
You're an idiot.
 
K

Ken Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
How many of you out here have ever discovered that another company had
stolen your designs? As a CM, I have seen it once, and as a hired gun I saw
it once on a complete product scale (although multiple products copied by
this company). I have seen teardowns done, but not cloned. I wonder how
prevalent this is.

I've seen one case where the PCB traces were in exactly the same place and
one where sections of the schematic were obviously lifted.

In neither case did the copy cat gain much. They were late into the
market.
 
K

Ken Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
John Larkin said:
I hear that AMD might have once cloned somebody's CPU architecture.

The way I heard it, they bought the rights but there was a disagreement
about just what the rights were that they bought.

IIRC, someone in Japan was involved too.
 
R

Roger

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ken said:
The way I heard it, they bought the rights but there was a disagreement
about just what the rights were that they bought.

IIRC, someone in Japan was involved too.

AMD were second source of the 8086. They did a technology exchange with
INTEL. INTEL put up the architecture, AMD thier process technology.

They later found out that INTEL were working on the 386 architecture
which rendered the 286 useless, allthougth INTEL had no qualms about
using AMD process technology, evidently they had better lawyers when
the deal was made ;-)

So AMD did thier own 386. Obviously cloning or reverse engineering it
would have seen them straight in court. So they emulated the
functionality in a clean room process were engineers had to build a
simulated logic model using VHDL or something similiar to implement the
386 instruction set according to INTEL datasheets. This was the first
time such a large device had been simulated and designed in this way,
it was quite a triumph for silicon compiler technology.

When they finally had it all together they "simulated" an 80386 chip,
it took two weeks to boot a DOS floppy but it was an incredible
engineering feat.

That model was then used as the basis for thier subsequent 80386
designs.

NEC. btw, did not do carbon copies of the INTEL chips but re-engineered
them with improved technology that was slightly faster. A bit greyer in
the legal area because it was in essence an improved version of the
INTEL silicon.
 
L

Luhan

Jan 1, 1970
0
Brian said:
How many of you out here have ever discovered that another company had
stolen your designs? As a CM, I have seen it once, and as a hired gun I saw
it once on a complete product scale (although multiple products copied by
this company). I have seen teardowns done, but not cloned. I wonder how
prevalent this is.

Best story I ever heard was the Russians ripping off the Intel 8080.
No one there wanted to take the responsibility for even the slightest
change - so they left the Intel logo on it!

Luhan
 
E

EE123

Jan 1, 1970
0
Brian said:
How many of you out here have ever discovered that another company had
stolen your designs? As a CM, I have seen it once, and as a hired gun I saw
it once on a complete product scale (although multiple products copied by
this company). I have seen teardowns done, but not cloned. I wonder how
prevalent this is.



The Motorola 68000 instruction set was an exact copy of the DEC Vax
system.
 
B

Brian

Jan 1, 1970
0
I've seen one case where the PCB traces were in exactly the same place and
one where sections of the schematic were obviously lifted.

In neither case did the copy cat gain much. They were late into the
market.

I almost forgot one. I remember a product that was copied exact, even the
pcb was DIGITALLY captured and then used. I had forgotten that one!
 
L

Luhan

Jan 1, 1970
0
EE123 said:
The Motorola 68000 instruction set was an exact copy of the DEC Vax
system.

Yep, the cleanest instructions set I have ever used. All the
registers, all the uses, every which way, all the time. Just the
opposite of the Intel designs which looked like they were created by
bureaucrats.

Luhan
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
I once cloned (different design, functionally equivalent) a LeCroy
product, at the request of one of their customers, and Walter got
fairly annoyed.

---
"Walter"?

Oh my,...

I guess that "name dropping" in an attempt to relate annoyance to
importance means that since you managed to steal something from them
which they couldn't defend makes you the originator of the idea.

Guess again.

ISTM that since you built on an idea that was there before you were,
you're indebted.

Pay up and stop bitching.
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
---
"Walter"?

Oh my,...

I guess that "name dropping" in an attempt to relate annoyance to
importance means that since you managed to steal something from them
which they couldn't defend makes you the originator of the idea.

Walter LeCroy apparently thought he invented the nanosecond, and got
very upset when anybody else dared to build fast electronics and
compete with him. And I stole nothing but the arrangement of the
connectors on their front panel: my design was original.

I was struggling to keep my startup company alive after developing a
family of modems for Reuters and losing the business because of their
internal politics. They were very cool modems, double-conversion
superhet FSK using all switched-capacitor filters. A guy from Los
Alamos walked into my office and literally threw a LeCroy 4208 on my
desk and said "Can you do this? If you can, I'll buy them." What do
you think I said?

a) No, I don't think I can design anything that hard

b) No, that would be immoral and you are a Very Bad Man

c) How many do you want?


Harry was pissed because half of the LeCroy units were DOA, it took
six months to recycle them for repair (from Switzerland), and then
half of *those* came back dead.
ISTM that since you built on an idea that was there before you were,
you're indebted.

Did you invent the 555 timer?
Pay up and stop bitching.

Am I bitching? Shucks, I thought I was happy about the whole affair.

John
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
Walter LeCroy apparently thought he invented the nanosecond, and got
very upset when anybody else dared to build fast electronics and
compete with him. And I stole nothing but the arrangement of the
connectors on their front panel: my design was original.

I was struggling to keep my startup company alive after developing a
family of modems for Reuters and losing the business because of their
internal politics. They were very cool modems, double-conversion
superhet FSK using all switched-capacitor filters. A guy from Los
Alamos walked into my office and literally threw a LeCroy 4208 on my
desk and said "Can you do this? If you can, I'll buy them." What do
you think I said?

a) No, I don't think I can design anything that hard

b) No, that would be immoral and you are a Very Bad Man

c) How many do you want?


Harry was pissed because half of the LeCroy units were DOA, it took
six months to recycle them for repair (from Switzerland), and then
half of *those* came back dead.


Did you invent the 555 timer?


Am I bitching? Shucks, I thought I was happy about the whole affair.

John
Hehehe... Cool Story.
 
B

Brian

Jan 1, 1970
0
Did you invent the 555 timer?


Am I bitching? Shucks, I thought I was happy about the whole affair.

John

Well, actually, it depnds on if you could eat, I suppose. When I first
started my company, I had a job come in. They had me lay out a PCB for a
design, with a few items in the right locations to "fit the case". I did it,
then ordered all the parts for a run of them. In the mean time, I was
looking on the Internet for related devices, just for shits (I had more time
then). I found the EXACT product on the market, and I mean EXACT except for
the layout and 3 parts or so. A bit of snooping, it seemed that the person
who came to me was his customer. The guy wanted it a bit cheaper, so he just
borrowed the design a bit. I tossed the whole job, even though we had about
15 grand in parts and pcbs (of course, I was not hurting though, makes a
difference). But, it did turn out ok, the orginal guy was nice, even bought
out our parts. So in the end, I nearly broke even, minus my wasted time.

That was the only design rip off I have seen in my CM company to date.
 
E

EE123

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
Well, no. Both are clearly derived from the PDP-11 architecture, with
the 68K looking more like a PDP-11 than the VAX. But they are very
different; for example, the VAX has 12 general-purpose registers,
R0..R11, but the 68K has eight data and eight address registers,
D0..D7 and A0..A7.

http://physinfo.ulb.ac.be/divers_html/PowerPC_Programming_Info/intro_to_risc/irt4_cisc3.html



John


John,
You are absolutely correct! I designed a 68000 emulator in the middle
80's
about ... almost 20 years ago....... gulp!
Jeez, time sure flies when...when... when
what I was thinking about??

Thanks,
Dave
 
Z

Zak

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
I hear that AMD might have once cloned somebody's CPU architecture.

ISTR they had a lices to copy the 486 hardware, but not the microcode.
So they rewrote that.

The Pentium they were not allowed to copy so they rolled their own.


Thomas
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
Well, actually, it depnds on if you could eat, I suppose. When I first
started my company, I had a job come in. They had me lay out a PCB for a
design, with a few items in the right locations to "fit the case". I did it,
then ordered all the parts for a run of them. In the mean time, I was
looking on the Internet for related devices, just for shits (I had more time
then). I found the EXACT product on the market, and I mean EXACT except for
the layout and 3 parts or so. A bit of snooping, it seemed that the person
who came to me was his customer. The guy wanted it a bit cheaper, so he just
borrowed the design a bit. I tossed the whole job, even though we had about
15 grand in parts and pcbs (of course, I was not hurting though, makes a
difference). But, it did turn out ok, the orginal guy was nice, even bought
out our parts. So in the end, I nearly broke even, minus my wasted time.

That was the only design rip off I have seen in my CM company to date.
Well, damn! The ten year old putz grows up. Nice to see that you
aren't attacking anyone anymore.
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
John,
You are absolutely correct! I designed a 68000 emulator in the middle
80's
about ... almost 20 years ago....... gulp!
Jeez, time sure flies when...when... when
what I was thinking about??
Pass it this way... :-]
 
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