[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)