Nvidia Sues Qualcomm And Samsung For Infringing On Its GPU Patents

[Scar89]

Booo. Screw these patent wars. If you want money Nvidia, get your SOC into some actual good phones. Live up to the image that you tried to create when you showed the first Tegra demo device off, I was so impressed, did that device ever happen? No.

This is coming from a buyer of a GTX 770 and 6 previous generations of NV cards.....

 

[IInuyasha74]

Apple got Samsung for some dodge lawsuits too? Maybe Apple didn't ask for a lot so they just went ahead and payed it to get it over with or maybe they got something in return.

Honestly its kind of surprising they are trying still. I was thinking with how much power Maxwell saves Nvidia would finally manage to make its way into low enough power for smart phones. Granted money is always nice, but they managed to pretty much destroy 3dfx with pure competition in early 2000, and while I personally prefer AMD now Nvidia is still majority lead for desktop GPUs last I checked. Seems they could of just made themselves a spot in the mobile market with good old competition without resorting to such dirty dealings.

 

[InvalidError]

Apple got Samsung for some dodge lawsuits too? Maybe Apple didn't ask for a lot so they just went ahead and payed it to get it over with or maybe they got something in return.

Earlier this year, Apple's second lawsuit against Samsung hit the courts, Apple was asking for over two billion dollars in damages but the jury only awarded about 120M$ after dismissing three of Apple's five patent claims, which supposedly barely covers Apple's legal fees.

My interpretation is that the jury politely told Apple to go screw themselves: their two surviving patents were just barely good enough for the jury to award legal costs but no further compensation or damages.

 

[somebodyspecial]

Looks like Nvidia's frustration with failing to earn the market shares they hoped for with Tegra just entered the next stage: suing the competition for royalties.

At a glance, most of those patents should never have been granted in the first place since they have tons of prior art in CPUs, older GPUs from before programmable shaders, obvious/natural technological progress, etc.

None of the summaries from Nvidia's patent struck me as genuinely original.

Attacking NV as usual. You seem to forget Intel is paying NV right now for the same stuff (shipping PC gpus, just not discrete ones) and now phones are doing the same things. Unless they have the patents for shipping these types of products, it would make sense they are violating quite a bit of stuff from either NV or AMD or heck maybe both. These two have been the only ones in this business for the better part of the last 20yrs and gobbled up IP from the rest they both dominated.

It's comic anyone would NOT think these guys will have to pay something if even INTEL had to pay for the same stuff (though in a round-about way, they licensed NV tech to not run afoul of patents in exchange for chipset ability then Intel found a way around the chipset issue, thus kind of stealing NV gpu patents without reciprocating, call it what you will). You think samsung or qcom have thousands of graphic patents? No. You don't think there is a reason Qcom has NOT shown any of their gpu tech to the world (anandtech said they are the only ones holding out info, I posted on that story they'd get sued at some point)? Meanwhile AMD/NV have been adding patents for 20+ years of gaming. Now that they are shipping things that run REAL games (phones/tablets I mean, they can do this stuff now), this lawsuit should come as no surprise (and another by AMD at some point depending on what patents they own).

I'd bet apple is next, but no point in taking them on until you've already won in court vs. Samsung/Qcom first or maybe IMG.L has some patent agreements with AMD or NV. Who knows, but it's about to get interesting for sure. Now that they are all doing WAY more in gaming, some people will be owed for how they are doing it.

If the language is the same in the patents as it is in their statements above of what is IN those patents, I don't see how anyone can get out of infringing on at least a few of them. This is not like the stupid apple rounded corner crap. These are real things that gpus use, and NV/AMD both use. This isn't patent trolling. Prior art before programmable shaders?...LOL. So not programmable shaders then right? So in your mind the creator of the light bulb has IP rights to all things oled, lcd, led etc?...ROFL. Natural evolution right, I mean the all create light, display light etc? ROFL. Your NV hate makes you blind. In your mind Qcom has no patents for cell modem tech because some guy years ago created the regular telephone over some wires? LOL. You are an invaliderror

I wonder if you claimed the same crap when AMD sued Intel. Fortunately for Nvidia, your first glance means nothing in a court of law

So if Nvidia or AMD don't own the patents to this stuff, who does in your mind? Why create the next great graphics technology if you can't patent it? Why invest at all if everything is counted as simply the natural evolution of something else? Your logic is asinine. Intel doesn't own a patent to x86 I guess either huh? I mean someone else created some really stupid (brilliant for it's time) cpu before Intel, so x86 shouldn't have been granted a patent. I mean it's just another cpu right?...LOL. Before microprocessors it was done with a bunch of circuit boards, so the cpu is just a natural evolution of a bunch of crap doing the same jobs right? WRONG. For most of the 90's gpus were NOT programmable in any way. I'm guessing when NV made it available they patented it, like any company would who got there FIRST.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8492/nvidia-files-patent-infringement-complaints-against-qualcomm-samsung

"In the mobile SoC space however there are a much larger number of GPU manufacturers, and overall there is still a certain “wild west” aspect to patent licensing and infringement."

I guess it's about time the wild west ended As anandtech said, some of these patents go back to 3dfx years. It's time to pay the person who owns the tech you're stealing. It isn't patent trolling when you actually OWN and USE the patent in products. One of the patents is from a company 3dfx purchased...LOL. Thus nvidia are the OWNERS of the prior art as they bought them after 3dfx bought said company. After reading further at anandtech ARM's Mali and Imagination's PowerVR chips are named in the suit.

Again this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's been watching the industry for the last 20-30yrs. I sincerely hope AMD has a few patents they're about to sue over also (NV/AMD have agreements with each other over this, but none of these other people do with these two). Time to pay the people who actually came up with this stuff and unlike patent trolls actually use it in their tech today and sell it daily.

At glance, your comment should never have been posted in the first place

 

[IInuyasha74]

That is forever long post, and after the first paragraph its already enough to say you need to stop defending Nvidia. I'm not sure what Intel paid Nvidia, but Intel's GPU design is one made in-house by their own team. Its a direct continuation of the GMA graphics they slowly upgraded from the 1990s until present day. It uses a completely different type of rendering even, based on polygons instead of triangles as the most basic geometric shape, similar to how Imagination's PowerVR graphics do, and are thus much closer to PowerVR graphics than Nvidia graphics.

As for the parts of the GPU Nvidia is trying to patent, its simply unethical to do so. Its close to an attempt to be a monopoly. Its like if Intel tried to patent all CPUs both RISC and CISC, of all types because they first had the 8080. Granted they probably tried at some point, but it would be crazy. These aren't things that Nvidia developed single-handedly. These are things designed by computer scientists doing 3rd party research, and major organizations that decide what the standards are for such types of hardware. Everyone has their own implementation of it, their own design for how to do it. Every architecture does it in a completely new and unique way.

All a programmable shader is, is that. Its a piece of hardware, specialized for an operation that can be told do so something by a software code. Thats the basics of it. Nvidia can't sue Qualcomm for making computer hardware, that is compliant with OpenGL and DirectX standards for universal APIs.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Also, after reading the article on Anandtech you linked to, if they really went after everyone violating the patents they are talking about, literally everyone who makes GPUs in the entire world, including AMD, and every company that has ever made a SoC, tablet, smartphone, or similar device. Perhaps they should all get together, between ARM, AMD, Imagination, Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, Mediatek, Allwinner, Rockchip, Broadcom, and everyone else they can probably tie this up in courts for a few hundred years. Not that any sane judge wouldn't rule in there favor after the first five minutes.

 

[thequn]

LOL they can sue Samsung is the same receiving stolen property law. your libel in the crime because check there source.

 

[Integr8d]

“Without licensing Nvidia’s patented GPU technology, Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to deploy our IP without proper compensation to us. <strike>This is inconsistent with our strategy to earn an appropriate return on our investment.</strike> WTF? We are now seeking the courts...

FIFY

 

[InvalidError]

Attacking NV as usual. You seem to forget Intel is paying NV right now for the same stuff (shipping PC gpus, just not discrete ones) and now phones are doing the same things.

I have not looked at what patents were involved in the Intel case but I have looked at those involved in this one and most of them should be revoked for being far too broad, trivial and obvious... as I said earlier, one of Nvidia's patent claims is about integrating functions into one chip and that is something every IC designer has been doing ever since the integrated circuit has been invented - that's what ICs are all about: integrating stuff. You cannot patent fundamentally obvious stuff like that.

Someday, a semiconductor manufacturer will figure out how to integrate DRAM cells in high-speed logic silicon and if this patenting integration stupidity does not stop, there will be a flood of re-patenting the same damned things just because they have integrated DRAMs... nothing new here since chip designers have been waiting for this to happen for years but since it is not happening, the next best things are on-package eDRAM (ex.: Intel Crystalwell) and TSV chip stacking. The only thing patentable here is the manufacturing breakthrough that enabled this new degree of integration.

Simple integration patents of any sort should be invalid by default since no chip manufacturer would choose to break up their design into multiple chips if they could integrate everything on a single die without worrying about die area, mask costs, TDP, defect density and other physical design constraints.

 

[tim1935]

Nvidia... the next Rambus? I hope not.

 

[anthony8989]

The only thing patentable here is the manufacturing breakthrough that enabled this new degree of integration.

Simple integration patents of any sort should be invalid by default

The foundation of Nvidia's case will probably be establishing that their patented technology is not a "simple integration" or 'natural progression' of anything. Over twenty years of R&D and heavy lifting, hundreds of millions of dollars spent on engineering and patent acquisition, etc., should offer them some kind of return. Ideally through licensing.