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Judge throws out ARM's claims against PicoTurbo
By Anthony Cataldo, EE Times
Jun 19, 2001 (7:12 PM)
URL: eetimes.com
SAN MATEO, Calif.—A U.S. federal judge has dismissed all patent infringement claims ARM Ltd. made against rival PicoTurbo Inc., a three-year-old company that makes synthesizable microprocessors that are compatible with ARM's instruction sets.
In a decision handed down last Friday, federal judge Claudia Wilken of the federal district court in Oakland, Calif. said PicoTurbo's microarchitecture did not infringe on seven hardware-specific patents held by ARM, a decision that could pave the way for PicoTurbo (Milpitas, Calif.) and possibly others to offer processors that are compatible with the ARM's instruction based on a proprietary architectures.
PicoTurbo said it will now file a request for a summary judgement to have the case dismissed.
"Now what we've got is real competition," said PicoTurbo chief executive officer Chip Stearns, who learned of the ruling Monday. "This is good for the whole market. To wait around three to four years for the next embedded processor is tragic."
An ARM spokeswoman said she did not know about the decision and was attempting to reach company officials for comment.
For each patent claim, Wilken found that PicoTurbo's implementation differed enough from ARM's circuit techniques so that no infringement was found. For example, ARM uses two programmable logic array decoders to decode 16- and 32-bit instructions, while PicoTurbo processor has a single decoder that translates 16-bit instructions into 32-bit instructions.
An array of claims
All told, there were 92 claims ARM made based on seven patents that were thrown out two months after the Markman hearing.
"(ARM) threw everything against the wall and hoped something would stick," Stearns said. "PicoTurbo looked very closely at their patents with counsel before we went to market. Even though the instruction set is the same, the implementations are a world apart."
Markus Levy, senior analyst with Microprocessor Report, said the ruling is a blow to ARM and could mean more licensing deals will go to its smaller rival. PicoTurbo, which Stearns said charges about half as much for licensing fees as ARM, has some 20 licensees, one of its most recent being Korean IC giant Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (formerly Hyundai Electronics). The company has secured 30 processor design wins that are expected to start shipping next quarter.
"ARM is in a tenuous position because of the state of the economy. Licensing deals are fewer and far between and so losing anything is not good for business," Levy said. "What ARM may have to do now is try to move its customers faster to a newer generations of architectures. And they have to invent parts of architectures that are not as easily copy-able." |
