[ale] [Fwd: [Am-info] Advanced Micro Devices will includeMicrosoft's Palladium]

[James P. Kinney III]

It's been a long time (6+years) since I ran into the "must have special
license to purchase this component" problem. As I understand it, certain
frequencies are strictly off limits for non-military uses. Possession of
radio sets that operate in this Mil-freqs is a felony unless you are a
currently authorized military person. As such, the components that are
used to directly access those bands are under strict lock and key and
require special paperwork to prove that you are under contract with the
military to produce, test, repair or otherwise are allowed access to the
components.

In the IC component area, there is a class of timers, and some other
gadgets I can't recall, that are used in the manufacturing of extreme
precision timing devices such as nuclear device detonators and related
friends. Those devices are not available under any condition to any
member of the general public. 

On the softer control side are devices (tubes, clock crystals, etc) that
can be used to easily make a device that can interfere with
non-government, FCC regulated transmissions. Radio and TV stations have
certain protections built in that includes restricting the sales of
potential jamming components. Just try to buy a radio transmitter tube
from ACK that outputs on a local FM radio station band!

True, many things can be done with general purpose components and logic
control in software. But they can't do it well. The best example is the
winmodem. Sure it works, but the price is reduced performance. All of
these components I'm discussing fall in the "best of breed" category of
performance.

As for the "burn off" discussion, Intel had reported that they released
the 486SX due to "market pressures for a lower cost chip". They also
discussed in several fab magazine articles where they developed a
process that could essentially burn off the data lines to the FPU on a
486 that failed the FPU testing. Thus the 486SX was born. The burn was
not on the die. It was way too risky ($$$) to potentially trash a die to
remove a poor FPU section.

The black market currently consists of components that "fell off the
truck". I have been approached more than once with an offer to purchase
laptops at about 1/3-1/2 of current retail. There was a big story about
an armed hold up where several thousand CPU chips were the stolen
target. They are worth more than their weight in gold. 

On Sat, 2002-09-21 at 15:52, Mike Panetta wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-09-20 at 16:58, James P. Kinney III wrote:
> > I hate to mention this, but there is a large array of technology devices
> > at the component level that are already on the "restricted for civilian
> > use" list. Things such as clock crystals of certain frequencies and
> > special logic IC's are already under tight control and basically illegal
> > for mere mortals to buy, or even possess. 
> 
> Like what?  I can't believe that someone would ban use of certian
> crystal frequencies, thats kinda stupid.  With the advent of PLL's just
> about any frequency can be synthesized from any crystal.  This is just
> plain stupid.  What "special logic IC's" are banned?  Again, with the
> advent of modern technology like FPGA's one chip can be programmed to do
> just about any Function you want.  Banning a particular piece of silicon
> is just rediculous if the algorithm is in the public domain (or even if
> its not, people can still get ahold of things through other means).
> 
> Now if you told me that certian uses of said hardware were illegal, I
> may be able to believe that.  But banning pieces of hardware as simple
> as a crystal is just plain insane to me.
> 
> > 
> > I expect that the industry will happily split its product line. Just
> > like the old Intel chips that failed testing with the on-chip numeric
> > processor had them burned off and repackaged as -SX series, these new
> > chips that fail the DRM test will be burned and then sold at a premium
> > for the server crowd.
> 
> Nothing was "burned off".  The die was just slightly modified with a
> laser or similar to disable the FPU.  BTW, intel (and others) still do
> similar things as this today.  They manufacture one speed grade of CPU
> and if a lot fails at the intended speed they slow it down untill it
> works (within reason).  Thats why overclocking works so well.  There are
> also companies like Motorola that subscribe to the 6 sigma design ideals
> and create chips that are capable of much higher speed (temp whatever)
> operation, but they are only sold for lower speed (temp whatever)
> operation because thats how they guarantee the chip will never fail
> (within reason of course).
> 
> > 
> > The black market in computer equipment is already huge. Wait until an
> > entire class of processors becomes available to the little guy only
> > through your local "dealer"
> 
> It may be huge for military type equipment, but otherwise I cant see why
> anyone would put anything else on a black market.  Most computer
> equipment is standardized these days, even for the military.  Most of
> the propriatary stuff is in software now.  I get this mag called VME Bus
> systems, that always seems to have one or 2 articles related to military
> applications of standard hardware.  There was even an article on how
> they upgraded the computers in the M1 Abrams tank.  Certianly the only
> thing that made the hardware in the article special was the fact that it
> was for harsh environment embedded systems.  That and it cost quite a
> bit ;).  Otherwise any of us could buy it today.
> 
> > 
> > "It's OK kids. The first chip's free!"
> > 
> 
> Mike
> 
> > -- 
> > James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
> > President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
> > Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
> > 770-493-8244             \.___________________________./
> > 
> > GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
> > <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
> > Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 



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