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Saturday, March 04, 2006

Cracking 5-User Limit in Skype 2.0

Recently, Skype and Intel have announced a deal that would limit Skype's functionality on all but specific Intel processors. Currently, Skype 2.0 offers 10-way conference calls only on Intel's latest dual-core CPUs, while other chips, including all AMD chips, will only allow for 5-way conference calls. It is argued that only those Intel dual-core CPUs meet the requirements - which would imply that no AMD CPU is fast enough.
Now, what are these requirements? Is there some kind of micro-benchmark built into Skype which measures the processing speed? Or does Skype look for a specific hidden CPU feature?

The patch is the result of two phases: code analysis and design of the patch. The code analysis, or reverse engineering, reveals the relevant code block, which overrides Skype's limitation for Intel's dual-core CPUs. The patch design isolates the minimal set of instructions that need to be modified to cancel this limitation

Get the patch and read the code analysis here

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