There's a new patent troll in town I see. Nvidia probably doesn't see a very rosy future for itself... Patent trolling is something that's usually done in desperation. Alienating yourself from the industry isn't usually the best strategy lol. Could also be in nv's style of walling up the garden. Either way, terrible strategy. Utterly tragic decision and a fool's errand.
Nvidia's attorneys apparently don't agree with you.
Don't worry. It's not AMD they are going after. They have extensive cross-licensing between them.
You know, I just read that ParkerVision had sued Qualcomm in 2011 and Qualcomm was ordered by Jury to pay ParkerVision 173-million in patent infringement damages. Despite the conclusion the jury arrived at, a single federal judge overturned it. Basically voiding the 173million verdict.
This could happen again of course, but my point is, initially, Qualcomm was found guilty of patent infringement by a jury before it was overturned by a single judge. They may as well have not even gone to trial if this sort of thing can happen.
often the jury itself is the problem
Its 17 years ago the "Rendering Pipeline" with its Screen space tiling was filed.
17 years and now we have a lawsuit.
Clearly this is a strategic move and have nothing to do with the - if - actual breaking of the patent.
Can you show us what aspect of the rendering pipeline is the concern? Or is it the entire "idea" of a rendering pipeline that is being called into question?
Clear? yeah. Clear as mud.
I'm not outright defending either. "'m probably reacting to the outright claim of wrong doing by Nvidia here before anybody knows anything about anything. No benefit of doubt given but plenty of blame for being in the wrong when most, if not every single person here cannot decipher "properly" what aspects of what IP is what Qualcomm is being sued over. Just stop.
The details WILL be provided eventually.
Dont derail the point.
As you say its clear as mud what is in concern in the pipeline, as NV have not cared to explain it.
What is damn clear is this patent was filed 17 years ago. If this patent was broken, it has been for 10+ years. Why did it take 10 years for NV to react?
The "point" is not what you say it has to be anyway. 17 years or 17 minutes matters why? Is there a statute of limitations?
Mopetar, the infringed patents are listed in the register article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/04/nvidia_sues_qualcomm_and_samsung/
Samsung have show they go to extreme measures to steal technology eg. Oled tech from LG partners. They dont give a rats ass about anyting but money, and treat their employees as robots. They copy whatever they can and do it all the time. But when NV is suing now, it can only be because of the entire Tegra strategy is going to a halt. They can not sell their mobile solutions, and the next step is therefore to change strategy and sell the IP.
Problem is they patented it:
https://www.google.com/patents/US6198488
What? They did it a a time where no other company was able to do it. ImgTech wasnt able to it with Kyro 2...
Let s see what did exist at the time :6 déc. 1999
A troll patent by the definition since there was prior and applied art, that S3 got his TL being bugged is another matter, Via who bought S3 could as well claim intellectual property being infringed and ask for some money....from Nvidia.During 1999, Diamond and S3 merged and the Savage 2000 GPU was the first product from the combined companies
Savage 2000 supported S3's S3TC texture compression, a hardware transform and lighting engine named "S3TL", and was equipped with a "QuadTexture Engine" capable of a single quad-textured pixel per clock or 2 dual-textured pixels per clock.
At the end of 1999, the Savage 2000 and the GeForce 256 were the only gaming-oriented cards with hardware T&L.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Savage#Savage_2000Diamond eventually released drivers with S3TL support in OpenGL and Direct3D. Unfortunately S3TL does not function properly. It causes missing textures, errors in geometry and models, and minimal performance benefits. Whether the issues are a result of poor drivers or defective hardware is unknown.
Despite the earlier launch date of the Geforce SDR the hardware T&L unit of the Savage 2000 was not working at launch and AFAIK they never released any D3D7 drivers for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Savage#Savage_2000
Prior Art, sure.
A troll patent by the definition since there was prior and applied art, that S3 got his TL being bugged is another matter, Via who bought S3 could as well claim intellectual property being infringed and ask for some money....from Nvidia.
There are too many people who have almost no understanding of how patents or patent law actually works trying to throw around their opinions as if they mean something.
Just because someone else did something similar doesn't mean that nVidia's implementation isn't patentable or that others aren't infringing on it. You would need to show that the implementation created by S3 is exactly the same as described by nVidia's patent.
Interestingly, nVidia isn't being honest when they say this is the first time they've filed a lawsuit against another company regarding their GPU patents. They did it to 3dfx in 2000, before acquiring them:
http://techreport.com/news/1131/nvidia-clubs-3dfx-with-patent-suit
Look how similar the defense statement is to the one they issued recently..
These patents look quite a bit more specific than many of the ones in this current case.
How is it that you seriously think that anyone else is using a T&L unit like the one in GeForce 256 in a modern mobile GPU? No one has been using fixed function T&L for several years to begin with. Your argument is self defeating.
I wouldn't take any arguments generated in here, for or against, (including yours and mine) what the details of the suit are and what exactly the IP is that is being allegedly infringed upon. You have no idea what you're looking for in the patents. Then or now. Nor do any of us. Appreciate that.