[HN Gopher] Socialist Romania Computer Chips
___________________________________________________________________
Socialist Romania Computer Chips
Author : picture
Score : 61 points
Date : 2022-09-29 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cpushack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cpushack.com)
| 9front wrote:
| Socialist Romania did not pay to license Western chip
| technologies. All production was based on stolen IP. Ceausescu
| had a vast spy network stealing everything they could from
| abroad. The spy network was dismantled when Pacepa, the
| mastermind behind it, defected to US in 1978.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Participation in cross-border intellectual property agreements
| is voluntary. Even though it is more "forced voluntary" these
| days. But it is not an unalienable right.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Romania had the strongest ties with the western world among
| communist bloc states, and as such access to some technology:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_industry_in_the_So...
|
| The pacepa event you are referring to is when ceausescu was
| directed by the russians to "penetrate" texas instruments. Here
| is an article about it from 1985:
| https://apnews.com/article/e45f1f4ba20cfa8c6e400948177970ed
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Same for East German chips (mainly Z80 and family), but with
| the Western CoCom embargo in place for anything that was more
| advanced than a toaster [1] there wasn't really a legal way to
| obtain a license anyway.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul...
| masswerk wrote:
| It is to be mentioned, though, that some of the Eastern Bloc
| chips were only on the outside identical to the Western
| originals, but featured their own internal designs, some of
| them even robuster and/or more feature rich than the
| originals. It wasn't always just copy and paste.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| True, at least the East German Z80 clone U880 was most
| likely "properly" reverse-engineered from a real chip's die
| photos (similar to how the visual6502 netlist was reverse
| engineered), with bug fixes applied in the process -
| because the U880 has a slightly different undocumented
| behaviour than an original Z80.
|
| There are still conflicting stories to this day though
| (e.g. some licensed clones from other Western manufactures
| also differed in behaviour in those areas - so the U880
| design could have been stolen from those), the only thing
| that's for sure is that the U880 isn't a "transistor-
| perfect" clone of an original Z80.
| masswerk wrote:
| Based on what I've read, this seems to be also true for
| the soviet PDP-11 single-chip designs.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| "Devices licensed from Western manufacturers were often named
| according to the Pro Electron standard. Microelectronica
| assigned integrated circuit designations according to the
| underlying technology"
| docmechanic wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I'm reminded of my surprise when my
| Russian language teacher at university told me that Russians
| celebrated Xmas, and with trees no less. This didn't compute with
| the typical nationalistic propaganda that passes for 'news'.
|
| "The socialist bloc of countries that arose after World War II
| was not a monolithic entity, it had significant country and
| cultural differences."
|
| "Unlike the Soviet integrated circuit designation or the East
| German semiconductor designation, the Romanian government did not
| set standards for the labeling of semiconductors."
| baybal2 wrote:
| grishka wrote:
| > Russians celebrated Xmas
|
| Huh? I'm Russian and I don't remember when Christmas even _is_.
| We celebrate the new year, and yes, there are trees. Christmas
| is very much a religious holiday for religious people.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > This didn't compute with the typical nationalistic propaganda
| that passes for 'news'.
|
| "Nationalistic propaganda" told you that Eastern Bloc countries
| didn't celebrate Christmas, wat? The whole religious aspect of
| Christmas was extremely toned down of course, but even the
| communists didn't have the power to dismantle the Church
| (surveil and suppress they did though).
| thriftwy wrote:
| Not sure about the rest of Eastern Bloc, in USSR the new year
| took on the big celebration with tree and feast. Which made
| the following (Julian) Christmas a small, quiet family
| holiday for people still exhausted by the large one.
| mariusmg wrote:
| CIP03 forever baby !!:)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-29 23:00 UTC)