IBM Files Patent For GPU-Accelerated Databases

[terion]

Can I patent "program that makes bazinga! on GPU in any language"?
Or "program that counts something on GPU in any language"?

 

[stingstang]

I should take a few years in computer programming, and business. Then I could make all my money just making patents of things I know people will invent one day.

 

[Thunderfox]

I am going to patent the phrase "Hello World" so that I can sue the makers of every program that is ever written.

Seriously, the idea of using GPU acceleration for any particular purpose should not be patentable. If it is, companies are just going to carve up the market in a race to patent a GPU version of everything that already exists.

 

[jkff]

The SQLite database has already been accelerated with CUDA. IBM are not the first to do something like this.

Article "Accelerating SQL Database Operations on a GPU with CUDA" (2010) http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~skadron/Papers/bakkum_sqlite_gpgpu10.pdf

 

[larkforsure]

[ Begging for helps ] Complaint about Human Rights Violations by IBM China on Centennial

Please Google:

Tragedy of Labor Rights Repression in IBM China
or
How Much IBM Can Get Away with is the Responsibility of the Media
or
IBM detained mother of ex-employee on the day of centennial

 

[Guest]

I do not see a point of patenting a general description of data processing on GPU which what IBM is trying to do.
The is plenty of prior work dating at least 10 years back. There are some current implementations of SQL on GPUs like this one - https://sourceforge.net/projects/alenka/files/
Unlike IBM's vaporware it is open source and real although not ready for production.

 

[eddieroolz]

Oh, this has not been patented yet? Should have submitted a patent myself 😛

 

[bit_user]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]Oh, this has not been patented yet? Should have submitted a patent myself[/citation]
Doesn't matter. Using patents as a revenue stream is worthless if you don't have the legal muscle to prosecute infringement. IBM would steamroller you.

Even defensive patents (which was the whole point of having them) are practically worthless, because you can't bring a product to market without infringing some patents, somewhere. Then, patent trolls come after you and you either pay the protection money or they sue you into oblivion.

How bad does the situation have to get before congress will give us a real solution? I'm not optimistic. Engineering will go overseas and companies will even refuse to sell the latest tech in the US, before there's any possibility of it getting fixed.