Rambus Is Back In Court, Sues Nvidia
Los Altos (CA) - More bad news for Nvidia. Following faulty chips that shaved a third off the company’s market capitalization, the company is now being sued by Rambus for the alleged infringement of 17 patents.
Somehow we are not surprised to see Rambus back in court. There are sarcastic voices in Silicon Valley who claim you are not considered a real hardware company if you haven’t been sued by Rambus at least once. Rambus claims that "a number of Nvidia products" with memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM infringe 17 Rambus patents.
Rambus seeks "injunctive relief barring the infringement, contributory infringement, and inducement to infringe the Rambus patents, as well as monetary damages". In plain English: Money.
"For more than six years, we have diligently attempted to negotiate a licensing agreement with Nvidia, but our good faith efforts have been to no avail," said Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus. "Graphics and multimedia products require leading-edge memory performance, and as Nvidia advances its product portfolio, it infringes more and more of our patents. We are left with no other recourse than litigation to protect and seek fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions. Nevertheless, we hope to continue discussions with Nvidia to reach a negotiated settlement."
Earlier this year, AMD settled with Rambus and is now paying royalties. Nvidia decided to do the opposite and head down to court.
Rambus has great technology on hand as well as a number of smart engineers on staff and we do understand that the company needs to protect its intellectual property. Rambus is still struggling to get its XDR memory technology established beyond the Playstation 3 and there was chatter that future graphics chips may use XDR.
Nvidia clearly may be discouraged using Rambus technology in the future and we are wondering whether Nvidia will now be pushing GDDR5 memory for the rumored Playstation 4 concept - instead of XDR2 DRAM?
It is too early to tell how the case between Rambus and Nvidia will develop, but common sense suggests that suing your customers isn’t always a good idea.
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quote: "It is too early to tell how the case between Rambus and Nvidia will develop, but common sense suggests that suing your customers isn’t always a good idea."
you are too kind
I really hate companies like Rambus. This is probably the only case where I wish the U.S. government would just step in and dissolve Rambus. They don't do anything except sue people and get in the way.
I dont understand how rambus is still alive who are they making ram for? I wish they would go bankrupt already.
Rambus is just another useless IP patent holding company now. Their only source of income is court awarded settlements and royalty payments (also the results of their lawsuits). They don't build or manufacture anything and are little more than a leach on the industry as a whole. I guarantee that they have 10X as many lawyers on staff as they have engineers. Sadly these type of companies will continue to exist until something is done w/ the broken patent laws in this country.
Don't worry if royalties are paid Nvidia will find a way to get the money from us (the consumer) to make up for its losses. Boy I would like to shove a RAM a BUS up their own ***.
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/175800680
AMD already has been had by Rambus.
Read the following Federal Trade Commission document for information about the case against Rambus for its illegitimately obtained monopoly.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/08/rambus.shtm
Correction: RAM a BUS up their own ***.
It seems a bit late to be suing over DDR...
I say go get 'em Nvidia!
Yeah, DDR came out right after RAMBUS was an actual RAM product...why didn't they go after DDR away instead of waiting around and suing all the companies that seem to be making money. There's a reason Intel stopped supporting RDRAM...price/performance...RAMBUS needs to quit suing everyone for their 15 year old tech!
So,XDR2 has no innovation? Jeez.
All I care is,if prices go up and I'm not getting crap,then I don't need it.
Hmmmm, is it me or does this look like AMD/ATI is funding a legal war between RAMBUS and Nvidia ?
To master9716: Sony is a major RAMBUS buyer, especially for their Playstation brand
They Cant make Money off there Own Junk so they Sue Everyone to make money! idiots!!!
Reminds me of the whole SCO UNIX debacle where SCO was suing everyone that dared to create a Linux distro. Of course they got their comeuppance from Novell who subsequently pulled what little rug was remaining under SCO out by declining to sue anyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO-Linux_controversies
I think AMD/Ati , Nvidia and all the others should play together against that shit of a "Company" called Rambus.
I hope the judge puts the hurt on rambus and tell them to stfu and die already! They are worse than friggin SCO !
i'm not too big of a fan of Nvidia because of the lag on DX10.1, holding back the industry...and how they recycle their cards over and over, finally hopefully embracing GDDR5 in their next gen of cards...but i'm sure everyone here feels that Rambus needs to die. it pisses me off everytime i read another damn Rambus lawsuit, someone needs to fly in with a jet and drop some nuclear warheads on that crap of a "company". good game -_-
This reminds me of a report, for school, I did on RAMBUS when it was first coming out and how DIFFERENT it was than DDR...yet all I've heard from them is how they own the patents to these different techs....whateva!
I really hate companies like Rambus. This is probably the only case where I wish the U.S. government would just step in and dissolve Rambus. They don't do anything except sue people and get in the way.
Really.... You don't think that INVENTING the frickin memory in the first place isn't useful??
While they didn't invent EVERYTHING they have patents to, they DID invent RDRAM, which was much better than DDR....
Intel (and the other companies) made a foolish choice in backing DDR instead, and Rambus is paying them back in kind all these years later...
Rambus STILL creates RAM for the Playstation, and will hopefully do so for the latest PS4 when it comes out.... and hopefully will be brought back into the fold for next gen graphics cards, as DDR5 has unacceptable latency issues, that look like they will continue into DDR6 and beyond!
Yea Nvidia is a cheating company lawlz. We have a AMD fanboi here. Sound the alarm, Nerdrage raid incoming!
Really? I knew that a long time ago,Nvidia were being monopolistic bastards when they forcing DX10 only.Obviously you didn't catch the drift.For all I care,I would rather have some competetion,but not in this way.It's bullshit haggling off the customer for innovation which,BTW,Nvidia will be switching to.Looks like Nvidia will actually have to try again,oh snap.
Couple things-
RDRAM was not unilaterally "much better" than DDR. Perhaps it could have been, but there were a few really huge problems with RDRAM, notably that it has MASSIVE latency compared to DDR RAM. Not only that, but by design, the latency could vary by a lot, from moderately worse than DDR to severe. Latency was the real reason that RDRAM didn't make it. It had a far superior bandwidth, but they never worked out the latency issues before it was effectively axed. The other very real issue that slowed the adoption of RDRAM was the fact that it ran very hot. As we have seen, heat dissipation issues can really effect a product- MS's 360 and potentially the new chipsets that NVIDIA designed. These two very big drawbacks and lack of support from all the major memory companies sank it before it ever really started. (I owned a computer with RAMBUS memory in it and can attest to the extremely latency of the ram).
As for NVIDIA being a cheating company... no shit. Obviously they are. But if you think that NVIDIA cheats anymore than AMD or Intel or any of the other giants, you are being totally daft. It is crap that NVIDIA is still stuck on DX10, granted, but to suggest that the gt200 arch is crap is utter garbage. This is a particularly insipid comment when you can actually go look at how both the gt200 arch and new radeon arch were designed on this very web site.
By *design* NVIDIA cards will be much better at more complex shader (generally speaking) while ATI will have a performance advantage in less complex shader functions. This carries over into games in that certain graphical features with varying complexity will see a boost depending on the card they are using. ATI is betting the farm on VLIW chips, NVIDIA with a custom design. NVIDIA hopes that as graphics and graphic design become more complex that the shader functions will get increasingly complex - hence they will have a long term advantage. ATI puts a lot of stock in the tried and (somewhat) proven VLIW style processors, which, while lacking in the hardware control that NVIDIA's processors have, are much simpler and smaller (hence being able to fit more on the die).
To suggest that NVIDIA is staving off innovation is just total and utter retarded. They brought CUDA into the wild basically a full year ahead of what ATI did with brook. It is superior in performance and features as well. This has nothing to do with game developers or anything. So basically, if you don't know what the hell you are talking about, why don't you do some research before spewing on a message board. It's time better spent for everyone.
Really.... You don't think that INVENTING the frickin memory in the first place isn't useful??
I don't know where you get your information but Rambus did not invent the RAM stick. The difference between RDRAM and DDR is neglible. Rambus is notorious for frivolous lawsuits. They have cost many companies millions of dollars and wasted tons of taxpayer money in their numerous court cases. They have done much more harm then good, and I hope Nvidia smacks them around in court. Now that the DOJ is on the lookout for Rambus, I am sure it will end up in Nvidia's favor.
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/175800680AMD already has been had by Rambus.Read the following Federal Trade Commission document for information about the case against Rambus for its illegitimately obtained monopoly.http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/08/rambus.shtm
While you're at it, look for the overturn of the FTC decision by the appellate courts. Then re-assess what you think you know about Rambus please. You only know a part of the story, the one that has been propagated to make you believe one thing when the truth is really something else. Sound like something that could happen in the media...boy, if you only knew!!!
I really hate companies like Rambus. This is probably the only case where I wish the U.S. government would just step in and dissolve Rambus. They don't do anything except sue people and get in the way.
For a lawsuit to make it to court, it has to have some merit or it would be thrown out. Chew on that one.
Rambus is just another useless IP patent holding company now. Their only source of income is court awarded settlements and royalty payments (also the results of their lawsuits). They don't build or manufacture anything and are little more than a leach on the industry as a whole. I guarantee that they have 10X as many lawyers on staff as they have engineers. Sadly these type of companies will continue to exist until something is done w/ the broken patent laws in this country.
You're right..they don't manufacture anything...they INVENT!!! Inventors, like the engineers at Rambus, don't come cheap. Who do you think is supposed to pay all those engineers? It happens with ROYALTIES! And what makes you think the patent laws are broken? Couldn't be the companies who want to use inventions without paying royalties now could it?
You're right when you say "common sense suggests that suing your customers isn’t always a good idea." But suing becomes necessary when a company continues to use patented technologies without paying the inventors. Otherwise, what incentive would there be to invent if there were no reward, be it monetary or otherwise. You should have also added to your article that Rambus tried to get Nvidia to sign a license and pay for the Rambus inventions for 6 years. Long enough to try other measures, don't you think?