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Nvidia in hot water again?

Jibber55

Jibber55

Jibber55

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Seems like Nvidia might be in a little more hot water.
http://www.techeye.net/business/itc-backs-rambus-against-nvidia
No idea which products this includes but this can't be good news,it does mention "GPUs, application processors, media and communications processors, and chip sets" so that seems to cover pretty much everything!
Probably not a good thing for the share price or the share holders either.
 
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Ouch. Says that imports of the affected Nvidia products to the US has been barred haha. This could be a real mess for them if they don't get a license sorted out pronto.
 
Yeah, I thought I remembered seeing something about this at the end of last year but it seems to be judgement time.
 
Rambus have gone after a number of people, somewhat fairly, but not "everyone". In this situation I believe Nvidia are using some Rambus patents in their memory controllers, which is why it basically covers everything they've ever made. Their chipsets have memory controllers, and they've seemingly used several similar bits in their gpu memory controller.

They'll get stung eventually but it shouldn't be "that" massive, as they'll probably prove there are multiple ways to do things none particularly better than another, and its not like the whole of any chip they've made is all Rambus, its essentially a tiny part. I'd imagine Rambus are asking for a tiny bit of cash for every product sold using their patents, like $0.02-0.05 or something, though across hundreds of millions of chips that will add up.
 
40 cent for pretty much every thing Nvidia builds is going to add up to a tidy sum.

I guess from reading that last article, Nvidia didn;t want to pay as much as Rambus was asking for.
 
Greebo said:
"Thats what happens if you do your patent research properly but then try and hide the fact you stole somebody elses idea"

Fixed for you ;)
Click to expand...

Wrong. Rambus is nothing more than a patent troll.

Rambus has a market cap of $2.24B yet over 95% of there revenue is made from filing and buying patents, then suing people or making them get a license. They pretty much do not sell or create any products or technologies any more.
It's just another great example of how messed up the U.S is and what a joke there patent system is.
 
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MR.B said:
Wrong. Rambus is nothing more than a patent troll.

Rambus has a market cap of $2.24B yet over 95% of there revenue is made from filing and buying patents, then suing people or making them get a license. They pretty much do not sell or create any products or technologies any more.
It's just another great example of how messed up the U.S is and what a joke there patent system is.
Click to expand...

I agree that their only existance is from patents. However, they came up with the idea and patented it. Nobody forced Nvidia or ATI to use their idea. And hence a small royalty fee should be paid on each item.

I can't see the problem with it.
 
Foxtrot26 said:
anyone know a ballpark figure on how much this is going to sting nvidia for?
Click to expand...

Depends how many products and over how long. If they used the patented memory controller in every gefore card and Rambus gets their maximum allowed 40 cents per card, you will be looking at

based on 140 million graphics cards per annum going back 11 years to the start of geforce cards you will be talking over $600 million. More if motherboards are affected.
 
Greebo said:
I agree that their only existance is from patents. However, they came up with the idea and patented it. Nobody forced Nvidia or ATI to use their idea. And hence a small royalty fee should be paid on each item.

I can't see the problem with it.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? Anyone can come up with an idea and patent it, even extremely vague ones that are not original and cover a very wide range of already existing technologies (e.g Apples patents). The U.S patent system is a joke and needs to be got rid of.
I highly doubt Rambus originally came up with these patents anyway, and rather just bought them or bought the company that owned them, purely for the patents. It's what they do.
 
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Didn't they also sit on these patents while being a member of JEDEC when the sdr ddr specs were being drawn up, and once ratified, basically came out and said "Ha got you all now"
 
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