From: Sengan Baring-Gould <sengan@seqnet.net>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 20:24:27 -0700

Re: STB and S3 tech specs

Marcus Sundberg wrote:

> Jon M. Taylor wrote:
> >         Because releasing their specs would allow their competitors to
> > reverse-engineer their hardware.  If you know the register layout, you can
> > hook up a logic analyzer to the chip(s) and discover exactly what the
> > internals of the chip are.  EXACTLY, down to the individual logic gates!
> > And since that layout is a trade secret and not patented, if your
> > competitors figure it out they can clone it 100%, not pay you anything,
> > and get rich.  This _has_ happened, exactly as I described above, many
> > times in the past.
>
> Hmm, I would have thought that disassembling and understanding a
> binary driver would not take any time worth mentioning compared to
> reverse-engineering a chip?

Yes. I don't agree with Jon either. Even if you were to get the gate-info
that would not give you the timing information. There's a lot to implement
and get right. DV is hard. Secondly the IP is still protected by copyright
on the chip/drivers/etc.

AFAIK what happens more often is that a "partner" has the netlist and then
uses it in their own product. But with graphics chips with an upgrade cycle
of 9 months the time to reverse engineer, rev silicon, write drivers is going
to be damn close to 9 months.

Creative's previous stuff is sound. (Soundblaster for eg). That had a much
slower upgrade cycle, partly because their API was directly accessed by every
game. Hence the number of "SB clones". I wonder whether Creative's current
attitude is not a result of that.

Sengan