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I don't think they do.

The memory model itself isn't patentable; the TSO memory model already existed on x86, as well as many other architectures before that. Having an option to enable/disable TSO might be patentable, but it'd be a stretch; there's plenty of precedent for allowing a CPU to select between operating modes at runtime. (For example, many PowerPC parts could be switched between little-endian and big-endian modes at runtime, and some developers even used this to assist in emulating x86!)

What's more likely is simply that other ARM SoC vendors aren't implementing their own cores (e.g. they're using a standard Cortex-Ax design from ARM), so they can't add deeply integrated features like TSO themselves.



I mean, selectable, cheap, memory model changes are novel and I pretty much guarantee they have patents on some aspects of it. Depending on the patent there might be some cute ways to work around it, but it's going to take some work on your part. They might even have patents on other attempts to get to the same effect that they might have tried out.

PowerPC's biendianness would be patentable too if it had been an absolutely ancient technique about as old as computers themselves.

And there's people other than ARM and Apple making ARM cores. Samsung's Exynos M5 should be coming out before too long for instance.


I believe POWER also has selectable TSO Mode. So did older sparks (before TSO became the only mode available).


> I believe POWER also has selectable TSO Mode

It does not.


I believe it is called "Strong Access Ordering Mode" and it is defined in the ISA, but I can't find any good reference online.

edit: this patent from 2012 from IBM references SAO:

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2012101538A1/en


Sparc did optional TSO 20+ years ago...




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