When you can't sell your hardware on its own merits...

[KillBoY_UK]

PowerVR had hardware T&L in series 2 for the arcade market. The arcade version of the dreamcast GPU had hardware T&L all pre dating GeForce.

I have to question this a little, I only know of PowerVR (in terms of arcades) being in the old Sega Naomi boards which where Series 2 (already 2 years after the Geforce 256 or the broken T&L in the Savage 2000) like the Dreamcast, The Didn't implement Hardware T&L in gpus until there shelved Series 3.

I didn't know about them having Unified shaders first I always though it was ATI Xenos GPU that did this first then the Nvidia 8800.

Come to think about it i remember having conversation about there (imagination technology) then resent transition to a Unified shaders in October 2008 at a trade show. must have took some time to get the product to market .

That being said i always though it was odd that no one else tried tiled rendering. I guess more merit was seen in a Z buffering like solution

 

[Pottsey]

ok fair enough, in that case can you link up the patents in question from Nvidia and the one form PowerVR so we can compare them please.

Sorry I haven’t got time to dig though my data right now about to go see my dad’s band play and I don’t have an online links to PowerVR patents. You can see the NVidia patent in the earlier link. If you have more time then me one example is the (VideoLogic) Series 2 PowerVR Elan hardware T&L chip. It was sold and licensed to Sega years before the NVidia patent was filed in 1999.

 

[Pottsey]

I have to question this a little, I only know of PowerVR (in terms of arcades) being in the old Sega Naomi boards which where Series 2"

PowerVR would have had to sell/license the PowerVR CLX2 GPUs Elan hardware T&L chip to Sega around 1997/1998 ish for Sega to make use of it. Which predates NVidia patent. Off for the night now

 

[KillBoY_UK]

PowerVR would have had to sell/license the PowerVR CLX2 GPUs Elan hardware T&L chip to Sega around 1997/1998 ish for Sega to make use of it. Which predates NVidia patent. Off for the night now

If that's the case that i stand corrected but I can't find anything about custom Series 2 arcade chips with Hardware T&L. It would seem very odd to leave it out of the desktop Series 2 cards years later when it was being uses a lot by API's and games.

 

[humbug]

If you want to get a little taster of how this argument would play out in court, read this thread

 

[FoxEye]

Threads like this are interesting, and I always end up reading around them.

Turns out Google lost a patent claim vs a patent troll called Vringo, who bought two patents from long-dead 90s search engine Lycos. The patents related to filtering search results.

Google lost the case in 2011, and were ordered to pay damages that could amount to over 1 billion dollars. In August this year the decision was overturned by the Federal Circuit, but Vringo will appeal. Commentators think they could well win.

It's frankly amazing that Google could end up paying over 1 billion dollars to a patent troll, despite Vringo freely admitting to media that "Google didn't copy" their invention. Instead Google simply invented their own search filtering system. But alas the concept of search filtering is patented. Microsoft already settled with them.

It's madness!

http://www.thedeal.com/content/tmt/patent-rulings-against-vringo-spherix-crush-stocks.php

Meanwhile some people are saying that the Federal Circuit should not be able to over-rule lower courts so easily. They are upset that the FC has overturned a lot of successful patent trolls recently, and are worried it will hurt patent monetisation, as they call it.

The world is so corrupt.

 

[ubersonic]

I can't find anything about custom Series 2 arcade chips with Hardware T&L

That's because the weren't any, HW T&L didn't get added until series 3. The confusion with the NAOMI boards is because the NAOMI 2 used a pair of series 2 PowerVR GPU's + standalone HW T&L chip, the NAOMI 2 didn't come out until 2000 and the Original NAOMI had no HW T&L.

Trying to claim PowerVR did it first on that basis is like Intel trying to claim the invented APU's because the 80486 CPU had video capability when paired with an ISA VGA card.

 

[Pottsey]

That's because the weren't any, HW T&L didn't get added until series 3. The confusion with the NAOMI boards is because the NAOMI 2 used a pair of series 2 PowerVR GPU's + standalone HW T&L chip, the NAOMI 2 didn't come out until 2000 and the Original NAOMI had no HW T&L.

Trying to claim PowerVR did it first on that basis is like Intel trying to claim the invented APU's because the 80486 CPU had video capability when paired with an ISA VGA card.

I never said PowerVR was first I said they pre date NVidia patents and products. PowerVR and Videologic are the same company. Videologic was the company name, PowerVR is the GPU. Saying Videologic HW T&L chips is like saying NVidia HW T&L chips.

Anyway it was series 2 not series 3 that first had HW T&L chips. Series 2 in some versions had the Elan hardware T&L chip on the same semiconductor platform. Which is what the patent was all about. Not on the same chip but on the same platform.

EDIt: NAOMI 2 did not come out till 2000 but that doesn't matter. PowerVR sold the Series 2 GPU with hardware T&L to Sega around about 1997. Pre dating NVidia.

 

[Orangey]

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/09/04/nvidia-sues-samsung-qualcomm-like-semiaccurate-said/

Last February, Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang directly confirmed their IP trolling attempts, we told you about it here. It is worth re-reading the quote from Jen-Hsun about patents in that article, it is quite illuminating in light of the trolling lawsuits just launched. This is exactly what we said would happen, and it is playing out almost exactly like we said. Why do we say that it is almost exactly how? Because we thought this suicidal drive would go after a few small players first in the normal IP trolling method. None signed up even at the very generous terms offered, that should speak volumes about how much merit this trolling exercise has.

So what are the licensing terms? We told you about the up-front fees Nvidia wanted here, and the per-device fees too with numbers like usual in SemiAccurate. In light of what Nvidia is asking, we told you about why they were attempting to ‘negotiate a license‘ first, and why it has nothing to do with licensing at all. If you heard today’s call, this is the game Nvidia is trying to publicly play for later nefarious uses.

So in short, SemiAccurate told you directly about Nvidia’s sham Kepler licensing scheme and why it had no chance of success. We also told you the true intention, patent trolling, over a year ago, and why the key players make licensing a legal impossibility. We told you about a bit of the blowback over the direct trolling threats Nvidia made, and about a few of the targets. We also told you quite directly about the fees Nvidia was asking from the companies they threatened, and who caved in to them. That would be no one, and it was for cause, Nvidia never intended to license, only set a very dangerous stage.

Lastly we told you why this was all playing out the way things were behind the scenes, and what the intentions behind each step were. In short we told you all about the Nvidia patent trolling exercise and current lawsuits, step by step, with names and numbers. Told you. Again. And again. And again. If you care about accurate long-lead tech news, there is only one source.

 

[layte]

A fair and balanced editorial from SA as usual.

 

[ICDP]

A fair and balanced editorial from SA as usual.

At least he predicted that Nvidia were leading up to this for a year +. This is not me saying I think they are wrong with their breach of IP claims, I honestly don't care.

It's nice to see this thread develop along the usual them and us lines.

 

[ubersonic]

Nvidia have released an official statement on the suite:

This is an important day for NVIDIA. For the first time since starting this company 21 years ago, we have initiated a patent lawsuit.

This afternoon, we filed patent infringement complaints against Samsung and Qualcomm with both the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and the U.S. District Court, in Delaware. You can see our press release here, and the complaints here and here.

We are asking the ITC to block shipments of Samsung Galaxy mobile phones and tablets containing Qualcomm’s Adreno, ARM’s Mali or Imagination’s PowerVR graphics architectures. We are also asking the Delaware court to award damages to us for the infringement of our patents.

Initiating action after negotiation

We have spent more than $9 billion in R&D since 1993 when we began to build the best GPUs and the richest patent portfolio of graphics IP in the world.

Our IP strategy is to earn an appropriate return on our investment by licensing our graphics cores and by licensing our patents. In each case, we start with a negotiation.

With Samsung, NVIDIA’s licensing team negotiated directly with Samsung on a patent portfolio license. We had several meetings where we demonstrated how our patents apply to all of their mobile devices and to all the graphics architectures they use.

We made no progress. Samsung repeatedly said that this was mostly their suppliers’ problem.

Without licensing NVIDIA’s patented GPU technology, Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to deploy our IP without proper compensation to us. This is inconsistent with our strategy to earn an appropriate return on our investment.

We are now seeking the courts’ judgment to confirm the validity, infringement and value of our patents so that we can reach agreement with Samsung and its graphics suppliers.

Seven infringed patents

Our 7,000 issued and pending patents include inventions vital to modern computing. We have chosen seven of those patents to assert in these cases.

Those patents include our foundational invention, the GPU, which puts onto a single chip all the functions necessary to process graphics and light up screens; our invention of programmable shading, which allows non-experts to program sophisticated graphics; our invention of unified shaders, which allow every processing unit in the GPU to be used for different purposes; and our invention of multithreaded parallel processing in GPUs, which enables processing to occur concurrently on separate threads while accessing the same memory and other resources.

I will keep you updated on our progress in the cases as we move forward.

 

[ubersonic]

Anyway it was series 2 not series 3 that first had HW T&L chips. Series 2 in some versions had the Elan hardware T&L chip on the same semiconductor platform. Which is what the patent was all about. Not on the same chip but on the same platform.

In either case, both the series 2 with additional T&L and the series 3 with integrated T&L hit the market AFTER the GeForce 256 with T&L.

NAOMI 2 did not come out till 2000 but that doesn't matter. PowerVR sold the Series 2 GPU with hardware T&L to Sega around about 1997. Pre dating NVidia.

Sorry but you're wrong, PowerVR did not sell the Series 2 GPU with hardware T&L to Sega around about 1997 because the NAOMI 2 was the Series 2 GPU with hardware T&L in question, and it wasn't sold to SEGA until 2000. The ones sold circa 1997 (the original NAOMI) did not have HW T&L, HW T&L was the big addition that the NAOMI 2 had over it's predecessor.

Here, just to prove it:

September 20, 2000 - The next generation of Sega arcade hardware has arrived. At the ongoing JAMMA 2000, Sega of Japan chose to unveil its brand new arcade board, the Noami 2. This successor to the original Naomi shares a lot in common with its predecessor, but seems to feature a few key additions that will make for a damn impressive Virtua Fighter X indeed.

At first glance, the specs listed below suggests that the Naomi 2 is just the Naomi with a couple of extra effects and features. It so happens that these particular features are what could make the Naomi 2 so much more than its predecessor.

Naomi 2 features Hardware T&L, the big-time buzzword in realtime videogame graphics today. T&L stands for "Transform & Lighting," two essential elements for 3D graphics on your computer. The Naomi 2 moves the intense calculations for these two areas away from the CPU, leaving the SH4 free to do a whole lot more. The inclusion of Hardware T&L explains why the Naomi 2, while seeming to have basically the same specs as its predecessor, can push an amazing ten million polygons per second.

 

[Pottsey]

In either case, both the series 2 with additional T&L and the series 3 with integrated T&L hit the market AFTER the GeForce 256 with T&L.

PowerVR had hardware T&L on the market for sale to company’s around 1997 and sold them around 1997 to companies like Sega. How is that after GeForce 256 from 1999?

Sorry but you're wrong, PowerVR did not sell the Series 2 GPU with hardware T&L to Sega around about 1997 because the NAOMI 2 was the Series 2 GPU with hardware T&L in question, and it wasn't sold to SEGA until 2000. The ones sold circa 1997 (the original NAOMI) did not have HW T&L, HW T&L was the big addition that the NAOMI 2 had over it's predecessor.

No I am not wrong. I don’t think you understand how it works. PowerVR designed the series 2 and T&L units around 1996 to 1997. Then sold the technology to Sega around 1997 to 1998. Then Sega spent around 2 years developing a arcade machine. It doesn’t matter when Sega had a product on market as PowerVR had a product they sold to Sega around 1997.

“Here, just to prove it:”

That proves me right. For the Noami 2 to come out in Sep 2000 it had to have been in development for at least 2 years meaning they brought the technology off PowerVR in 1998 at the very latest most likely 1997. The development cycle for Socs, arcade boards and consoles is not 6 months. It takes years. As I understand it, it doesn’t matter when consumers brought the technology it matters when one company sold a product to another. There is no possible way PowerVR sold the hardware T&L unit to Sega in 2000 and then a few months later Sega had a arcade unit on the market. That's an impossible development cycle.

 

[triss]

Spoiler

PowerVR had hardware T&L on the market for sale to company’s around 1997 and sold them around 1997 to companies like Sega. How is that after GeForce 256 from 1999?





No I am not wrong. I don’t think you understand how it works. PowerVR designed the series 2 and T&L units around 1996 to 1997. Then sold the technology to Sega around 1997 to 1998. Then Sega spent around 2 years developing a arcade machine. It doesn’t matter when Sega had a product on market as PowerVR had a product they sold to Sega around 1997.

Do you have any Facts to back up these claims btw?
All these around times makes it seems like you dont

 

[ubersonic]

PowerVR had hardware T&L on the market for sale to company’s around 1997 and sold them around 1997 to companies like Sega. How is that after GeForce 256 from 1999?

It's not after it, it's just wrong.

No I am not wrong.

Okay I'll rephrase, what you're saying is the opposite of correct.

I don’t think you understand how it works. PowerVR designed the series 2 and T&L units around 1996 to 1997.

And it took 3-4 years for them to make their way into a product? (NAOMI 2) and 5 years to make it into their own graphics cards? (a card that was shelved and the division closed because they had become uncompetitive due to their lack of T&L support).

You realise that if the GeForce 256 launched in 1999 then the development of it and T&L had been ongoing for some time yes?

-----------

Look at it this way, when Nvidia launched the GeForce 256 they made a BIG thing about their new T&L tech, the whole industry was buzzing about it, it completely changed the landscape, do you not think PowerVR would have said something if it wasn't the case? And add to that it was the T&L support that GeForce/Radeon had that was responsible for killing off 3DFX and PowerVR's GPU sales and eventually divisions (hell it killed 3DFX's whole company). Do you not think PowerVR would have filed a suit then or in the time since if they could?

Of course they would, if they could, but they can't.

 

[pete910]

Okay I'll rephrase, what you're saying is the opposite of correct.

That made me giggle

 

[Marine-RX179]

I still think it's ridiculous that they going after Samsung based on their graphic related patent infringement claim, rather than Qualcomm/PowerVR alone. Their intention is quite clear, with their demand on "block shipments of Samsung Galaxy mobile phones and tablets".

"With Samsung, NVIDIA’s licensing team negotiated directly with Samsung on a patent portfolio license. We had several meetings where we demonstrated how our patents apply to all of their mobile devices and to all the graphics architectures they use.

We made no progress. Samsung repeatedly said that this was mostly their suppliers’ problem."

If I was Samsung, I would have said the same to Nvidia "Why are you talking to me? You are talking to the wrong guy! If you have graphic patent infringement related issue, go talk to Qualcomm/PowerVR instead, not us!" and ignore them.

Nvidia going after Samsung is as ridiculous as say...for example if Nvidia have graphic related patent issue with AMD, instead of going after AMD alone, they go after the manufacturers/PC makers such as OcUK that happen to use AMD graphic

We are asking the ITC to block shipments of Samsung Galaxy mobile phones and tablets containing Qualcomm’s Adreno, ARM’s Mali or Imagination’s PowerVR graphics architectures. We are also asking the Delaware court to award damages to us for the infringement of our patents."

So if ITC actually blocked shipments of Samsung's product, and Delaware court end-up ruling that Samsung/Qualcomm/PowerVR have not infringe Nvidia's patent, is Nvidia going to pay for the damages to Samsung for their lost of sales, or they would get to walk away clean, while leaving Samsung out of pocket? I'm no expert in the legal proceedings, but shouldn't the establishment of the case and ruling from court comes BEFORE the order of blocking shipments of products take place, not the other way round?

 

[Pottsey]

Do you have any Facts to back up these claims btw?
All these around times makes it seems like you don't

I cannot remember the precise time as it’s so long ago but its basic logic. The typical development cycle for PowerVR is 5 years. If we assume best case and everything goes perfectly it takes about 1 to 2 years for them to design and create the technology (longer for more complicated stuff). This technology get patented, sold/licenced to other companies. Those companies’ then typically spend 2 to 3 years developing a product like the Dreamcast. The cycle is about 5 years long give or take 1 year. For Sega to have a product out in shops in 2000 they must have at the very least licensed/brought the technology from PoweVR in 1998. That’s a 2 year development cycle for Sega which would be oddly short.

“It's not after it, it's just wrong.”

That makes no sense PowerVR sold a finale patented finished IP product pre 1999. Gefroce was 1999 yet I am still wrong?

“And it took 3-4 years for them to make their way into a product? (NAOMI 2) and 5 years to make it into their own graphics cards? (a card that was shelved and the division closed because they had become uncompetitive due to their lack of T&L support).”

Please don’t make things up that is completely incorrect. No PowerVR card was shelved or division closed at least not from the company behind PowerVR. The Kyro card did not become uncompetitive due to T&L in fact they had enhanced T&L which made them more competitive. They could run full hardware T&L enabled games with full features I even benchmarked them in the 3Dmark hardware T&L tests. Kyro sold millions and did very well it was never uncompetitive. Yes 3 to 5 years is the typical timeframe for development for new 3drcards, consoles, arcade boards, phones.

“You realise that if the GeForce 256 launched in 1999 then the development of it and T&L had been ongoing for some time yes?”

I agree with 1999 but what you don’t seem to realise is the PowerVR T&L technology had been in development and sold and licensed out to other company’s before 1999. This is an important factor for the case. How can NVidia say they own T&L when they patented it in 1999 and had a product in 1999 when PowerVR can show they patented it and sold the technology pre 1999?

Here’s an interesting question what if PowerVR fight back and say NVidia are breaking there FSAA patents and universal shaders and all the other stuff they copied.

“Look at it this way, when Nvidia launched the GeForce 256 they made a BIG thing about their new T&L tech, the whole industry was buzzing about it, it completely changed the landscape, do you not think PowerVR would have said something if it wasn't the case? And add to that it was the T&L support that GeForce/Radeon had that was responsible for killing off 3DFX and PowerVR's GPU sales and eventually divisions (hell it killed 3DFX's whole company). Do you not think PowerVR would have filed a suit then or in the time since if they could?”

That is incorrect. I strongly recommend you read up on the company behind PowerVR as you don’t seem to understand what happened, how the company works. The company behind PowerVR do not produce 3dcards for the most part. They are an IP (Intellectual Property) company. They design technology and sell/licence that technology to other companies. Those other company then create consumer products and none consumer products.

Pre 1999 PowerVR sold/licenced the enhanced T&L series 3 chips to STMicro and the hardware T&L chips to Sega. Then in 2000 STMicro had the Kyro cards out in shops which had enhanced T&L and Sega had the hardware T&L arcade board out. Considering the typical development cycle even if we shorten it to the bare minimum of 2 years that puts us at 1998 when PowerVR sold the finished patented technology to both companies. Long before NVidia patent. If you read up on development cycles less than 2 years is unrealistic and if STMicro or Sega brought the T&L technology in 2000 it would have been impossible to have a product out in 2000.

As for the rest PowerVR sales didn’t decease they increased and last time I looked was the no1 graphic chip on the markets. They have more GPU’s on the market than NVidia or AMD. The PowerVR division was never killed off its now shipping over 3 million products a day.

PowerVR sales didn’t diminish and I would suggest you read 3DFX as well as you have that wrong. T&L did not kill 3DFX that an entire other story I am not in the mood to go into right now. In short 3DFX killed them shelf’s due to a number of large stupid mistakes.

EDIT: This is why Samsung are saying it’s not us NVidia should be suing. Samsung licensed the technology from PowerVR and others so are rightly pointing the finger at the company's they licensed the technology from. Hence why people say NVidia are patent trolling.

 

[FoxEye]

We had several meetings where we demonstrated how our patents apply to all of their mobile devices and to all the graphics architectures they use.

Isn't that a very good indication that the patent is overly broad?

If as they claim they have a patent on the concept of the GPU itself, why aren't they also going after AMD?