It's a patent for a specific set of steps to execute vector code in loops in parallel, which means the HN title is needlessly linkbaity. The truth is ridiculous enough.<p>Your average HN reader would probably 'invent' the same technique if CPU design was their profession and they were tasked with the continuous march of CPU performance.<p>There wasn't anything in there that didn't seem straight forward enough to me after casually reading Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach five years ago, and I make <i>flash games</i> for a living.<p>At least in the case of patents on CPUs, though, your average company is well financed enough to fight a lawsuit around this patent, which was the particularly annoying thing about Lodsys.
Careful with the title -- this patent is much more specific than the name of the patent implies. There's a human-readable version of the claims in the "Description" section of the patent (past the initial, incomprehensible-unless-you're-a-patent-lawyer "Claims" section).<p>It looks as though it's a patent on a particular model for implementing a highly parallel CPU, with a focus on making vectorized loops work better. Interesting stuff.
This is related to what Apple apparently calls "macroscalar architecture." Here's an excellent writeup and collection of links on what is involved: <a href="http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/asampson/blog/macroscalar.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/asampson/blog/macroscalar...</a><p>(Someone previously posted that URL to HN as <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3887700" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3887700</a> and it received little response. Maybe the title wasn't sexy enough.)
Here we go again. Another HN submission about a patent, pretending that the title of the patent means <i></i>anything at all<i></i> about what it covers. Gotta read the claims, people.
I don't think the title is accurate, this seems to apply to parallelizing a particular type of loop, not "executing program code" in general.<p>But I don't understand the area enough -- what are vectorized loops, and what is Apple doing here? Can someone explain this patent in an easy way?
Careful, I don't think this is a "Apple patented executable code" situation. It looks more like the process is to build instructions to help concurrency, not just generalize program execution and compilation.<p>When the titles of most patents are taken in isolation, link bait is usually the result.
I am not an expert in patents or the subject matter, but it seems the patent only covers some encoding of (possibly automatically) vectorized loop. Maybe using LLVM, maybe in Apple's GPU drivers effort. No at all as general as the submission's title claims.<p>I would like to hear from more knowledgeable people what the invention is and how novel is it really.
I am not a big fan of the sensationalist and misleadingly terse headlines that sometimes accompany posts like this, but this one is pretty serious. Apple is claiming domain over a very fundamental operation here - one that is at the core of human thought and consciousness if not performant software.
Stop paying attention to trash patents that get filed every day (too many to count and of little consequence) and start getting outraged at companies that actually sue based on trash patents (Apple is the #1 offender here, but sadly not alone).
Scoffing at the <i>titles</i> of patents is usually a sign that you don't understand how patents work. A patent covers a <i>specific method</i> for achieving a goal, not the goal itself.
WTF there desribing a vector processor. These were about and prio-art back in the 70's. INTEL have added instructions to handle this type of processing. This is not new and how they got that patent again highlights what a crock of shit this whole patent mess is.<p>Are patents realy down to wording a known process in such a complex way that it appears to be new - as thats how I see alot of patents.<p>Bottom line if you can't sumarise it on the back of a postit note without duplicating somebody elses work then you have created nothing new at all.<p>I think bad patents like this should be fined, submit prior art patent then you should be fined - big time. Help pay for all this courtroo bullshitting about patents.
While the patent is not literally for "executing code", it still completely ridiculous and should not have been granted. Does anyone at USPTO actually reads the content of these applications, I wonder?
Glad to see most of the comments here are from people that read the patent, understood it and not the general lets go with the now popular Apple is a patent troll line of hating.
Makes me think of the Hughes/Raytheon SPE (Signal Processing Element) that I programmed when I worked at Raytheon about 2006. Loops to control parallel processing to/from multiple memories, ... It's at least 20 years old.<p>How can they get a patent on this? There must be lots of prior art (such as the SPE).
Is it clear yet, that "intellectual property" is not property at all? Rather, it is a government sanctioned monopoly on ideas that are not scarce like physical property.