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Cyrix
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== Legal troubles == {{Unreferenced section|date=December 2017}} Unlike AMD, Cyrix had never manufactured or sold Intel designs under a negotiated license. Cyrix's designs were the result of meticulous in-house [[reverse engineering]], and often made significant advances in the technology while still being socket compatible with Intel's products. In Cyrix's first product, the 8087 math co-processor, Cyrix used hardware math multipliers rather than the [[CORDIC]] algorithm, which allowed the chip to be faster and more accurate than Intel's co-processor. Thus, while AMD's 386s and even 486s had some Intel-written microcode software, Cyrix's designs were completely independent. Focused on removing potential competitors, Intel spent many years in legal battles with Cyrix, consuming Cyrix financial resources, claiming that the Cyrix 486 violated Intel's [[patent]]s, when in reality the design was proven independent.<ref name="courts">Rulings from federal court in Sherman, Texas, and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington DC.</ref>{{complete citation needed|date=May 2020|reason=Suggesting that a source exists is not the same as citing it in sufficiently identifying detail; see Template:Cite_court}} Intel lost the Cyrix case, which included multiple lawsuits in both federal and state courts in Texas. Some of the matters were settled out-of-court and some of the matters were settled by the court. In the end after all appeals, the courts ruled that Cyrix had the right to produce their own x86 designs in any foundry that held an Intel license. Cyrix was found to never have infringed any patent held by Intel. Intel feared having to face the antitrust claims made by Cyrix, so Intel paid Cyrix $12 million to settle the antitrust claims right before a federal jury in Sherman, Texas, was to hear and rule on the antitrust claims. As a part of the settlement of the antitrust claims against Intel, Cyrix also received a license to some of the patents that Intel had asserted that Cyrix infringed. Cyrix was free to have their products manufactured by any manufacturer that had a cross-license with Intel, which included SGS Thomson, IBM, and others.<ref name="courts" /> Intel had pursued IBM Microelectronics and SGS Thomson, both acting as foundries for Cyrix, with the rights of both IBM and SGS Thomson being upheld in separate legal judgements.<ref name="electronicnews19950109_sgsthomson">{{ cite magazine | url=https://archive.org/details/sim_electronic-news_1995-01-09_41_2047/page/n1/mode/1up | title=SGS-Thomson Gets Court To OK Cyrix x86 Activity | magazine=Electronic News | date=9 January 1995 | access-date=11 June 2022 | last1=Haber | first1=Carol | pages=2 }}</ref> The follow-on 1997 Cyrix–Intel litigation was the reverse: instead of Intel claiming that Cyrix 486 chips violated their patents, now Cyrix claimed that Intel's Pentium Pro and Pentium II violated Cyrix patents – in particular, the power-management and register-renaming techniques. The case was expected to drag on for years but was settled quite promptly, by another mutual cross-license agreement. Intel and Cyrix now had full and free access to each others' patents. The settlement did not say whether the Pentium Pro violated Cyrix patents or not; it simply allowed Intel to carry on making products under a license from Cyrix.
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