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NVIDIA Sues 3dfx For Patent Infringement
David D writes: "Apparently NVIDIA has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 3dfx. The CEO of NVIDIA commented, ``We have always been on the forefront of innovation in 3D graphics technology and visual computing...''. The competition has been pretty even, with 3dfx having no apparent advantage over NVIDIA. Where will this lead?"
I'm going to patent the English language and the color blue. Anyone else want to help?
-- Anubis
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." - Tao of Programming
Especially using words like "gripping" to describe the Nvida experience. Cut-n-paste journalism... Press release == story.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
On technical merits, I guess Nvida still wins it. The benchmarks (yeah, yeah) I've seen show Nvida thoroughly stomping 3dfx.
The real Threed's
--Threed
You know, they really don't give a fuck what the OSS contingent thinks. Most people don't give a fuck what the OSS contingent thinks. They won't miss the money of the few hundred (or even thousand) OSS zealots who want OSS everything. Not when Dell, Compaq, HP and other are using NVIDIA cards in their systems. Not when NVIDIA cards are the most popluar and highest performing. The mainstream consumers won't care, they'll just buy what they want. That leaves the OSS-zealots without any support and with crappy graphics cards.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Configuration for a Linear-Tracking Turntable's Tonearm And Supporting Bar
Invention consists of a supporting bar and eight main structural elements supporting and orienting a phonograph cartridge. Structural elements are in the form of rods and can be made of various materials- ideally light material, even moderately flexible material such as balsa wood (see photographs of prototype (yes I've built this)). These are the major design points covered:
- Each side of cartridge receives four rods affixed to the corners of the cartridge, stretching back to meet at a point where the linear tracking bar is located. The shape produced is of two elongated square-based pyramids stretching back to the positioning bar.
- These points are separated by greater distance than the distance of the cartridge from the bar, requiring the entire turntable to be unusually large- the cartridge will typically be at the 90 degree point of a right triangle formed by the cartridge and the sliders on the bar.
- The sliders may consist of small rollers on a little half-loop of rigid material- the points of the positioning arms must connect to a positioning element on the nearest point of the positioning bar, and not, for instance, to the top of the slider.
- The orientation of the cartridge can be adjusted finely by changing the lengths of individual struts in the positioning arms. If they are very rigid, all struts must be adjusted at once. If they flex, they may be adjusted in pairs.
- An additional strut or struts may be added from one of the cartridge corners to the top of the slider, forming a shallow triangular structure to some struts and running parallel to others.
- Primary feature is that all twisting, turning or yawing motions of the cartridge are rigidly braced along the long arm of the various struts, while linear sliding is entirely unimpeded. This also causes any bass frequencies presented by the phonograph needle to be braced along the long arm of the struts, rather than along the bending moment of the tonearm as in normal tonearm designs. This also makes it possible to use extremely light and non-ringy materials, such as balsa wood struts, for the mechanical supports- the arms entirely confine themselves to orienting the cartridge and the mass to permit bass reproduction is centered on the cartridge itself, minimising resonance and distortion.
It goes on and on and I have to run (annoyingly)- but really, patents are about _this_ sort of thing, something that is not done but works brilliantly. I've described (and built) a tonearm for phonographs that uses entirely non-rigid braces to achieve a phenomenally rigid result- the positioning arms can be twisted along their axes at the slightest pressure! But that mode of distortion is completely irrelevant to the bracing of the cartridge...I'm late late LATE dammit. But seriously- 'ordering through one click' is NOT what patents should be about.
I didn't say NVidia couldn't compete. I said they seem to think they can't compete. Why? I don't know; they make good cards. But from what I could gather, they're suing based on the concept of a 2D/3D combined acceleration card. That's an abuse if I've ever heard of one.
They must think they can't compete, or they wouldn't stoop to dirty tricks like this. This does beg the question of why they don't seem to think they can compete. I can't answer that. But I doubt they would stoop this low if they didn't have to; it's very bad PR.
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The main point being, if 3dfx actually HAS stolen their implementation, why should they NOT sue 3dfx?
Because they feel SORRY for 3dfx? Because 3dfx is having some rought times right now? Because they're all but the laughing stock of the 3D accelerator/video card industry? Because nVidia's now the performance leader, they should take PITY on them?
If the patents are viable, and 3dfx is shown to have violated them, nVidia's perfectly within their rights to sue. And they should. It'd send a message that you can't steal someone else's time and research that they spent untold millions (or billions) on.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Uh.. Think about it this way: SPECIFIC method and SPECIFIC apparatus for accelerating the rendering of images. You cannot patent ideas, only implementations. With all the financial interest involved this patent cannot be too broad or everyone else would be challenging it.
Wake up guys...
-- "Sponges grow in the ocean. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen."
If the idea of patents is supposed to be allowing the innovator to release the specs for their design publicly and still be protected (by the right to litigate, as in this case), why don't companies like Nvidia open their hardware and driver specifications so people can write open-source drivers to an open hardware spec?
The argument that "our competition will steal our secrets" falls apart when they've so clearly patented their designs up the yin-yang and are even more clearly willing to sue over them. Seems like Nvidia wants to have their cake (patent rights) and eat it too (keep their specs closed and proprietary).
The original designers of the idea of patents must be constantly spinning in their graves by now.
Are they sure that 3dfx really did infringe? From the list, it sounds like ATI and Matrox could be charged as well.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Well, what if I told you that two years ago 3dfx sued NVidia over a patent the held on multitexturing?
Yes, and when they did that I boo-ed them too. I look down on all anti-competetive practices. Its always dissappointing to see a company that thinks it can get ahead by cheap tactics. We shouldn't say "well turn about is fair play" we should decide exactly what is fair play and make the companies follow those rules.
I currently own a Voodoo3 and a GeForce 256 SDR. I am pleased with both products but not with both companies. I think I'll buy a Radeon AIW =)
My Home: Apartment6
Nvidia Drivers are quick - unfortunately for me (and my friends) they are *NOT* stable.
I found utah-glx - although it had it's moments of instability, at least would generally tend to crash on the same things.
When nVidia announced they were going to release non-DRI drivers, my message to them was *please* release the kernel source code - I don't care if they keep their OGL stuff proprietary, but I don't see why they didn't make all of their bottom level OS stuff freely available - this would mean that it might not be a 200K+ loadable module (200k running in kernel mode... fantastic idea)
I have hell on Windows, and I have hell on Linux (greater hell on Linux) - so for all intents and purposes at the moment I have no choice but to use XFree86's "nv" driver, which has never crashed on me doing 2d operations
-- Andy (whose next card will be a Radeon)
Patents are intended to enable continued innovation while helping the innovators realize some financial gain from their efforts. The idea behind patents is that once the protection is officially given, details of the invention can be revealed without fear that someone else will steal the idea without paying compensation. Without the legal protection, new ideas would have to be kept as trade secrets, and noone else would get a chance to examine the ideas and build on them, thereby slowing down the rate of progress. If the protection period were so short that others could simply wait for the patent to expire and then adopt the technology without paying any royalties, there would be little incentive for anyone to patent their ideas and reveal the details, again leading to a slowdown in in the rate of innovation.
They're all primarily concerned with methods of accelerating data bus transfer rates.
I don't know how I feel about this... Some of these patents are relatively new (this year, at least), so I see nothing wrong with taking this long to defend them. Some of them are from as far back as 1998, though, and it seems as though they waited a bit too long on that (although, perhaps they didn't notice until Voodoo5...)
Disclaimer: I actually believe in IP, IP law, patents, etc and am seeking a patent of my own currently
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can anyone explain what makes corporations do stupid things like this? I mean, we have had the marketing fiasco, the open source code used and then close soured until people screamed (that may have been an honest mistake, but who knows).
They do things like this because this is business. They're not in the game to be nice to people. They're in it to make gigantic-piles-of-cash (tm). This patent infringement suit is a very effective way of helping to maintain their market dominance and at the same time damage their main competitor, both of which will contribute to making their gigantic-piles-of-cash (tm) even larger.
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
You do not understand correctly. The claims, not the abstract, define the scope of the patent. The abstract simply gives you a general idea of the field of technology covered to facilitate patent searching.
The patents that NVIDIA is suing boil down to methods for efficient I/O - in the words of Derek Perez of NVIDIA
3dfx infringes on at least 5 patents dating back as far as NV1. All 5 patents are essentially I/O patents relating to efficiency of the interaction between the graphics processor and the core logic, memory or CPU.
But like all patents, these are't easy reading. Trying to get to the essence of the method isn't easy. But here goes anyway:
Patent 6,092,124 can be sumarised as being very similar to a local cache - a DMA sits next to the I/O bus and acts as a buffer for passing information over the I/O bridge or back down to system memory depending on the value of pointers held in the DMA. To me this does not sound very original - it sounds like a primitive level 2 cache.
Pate nt 5,758,182 This one is an autonomous (of the OS) memory manager - it maps virtual addresses to physical ones. It uses pages to map memory and holds structures keeping tabs on that memory. Hardly mind blowing stuff. The main swansong of this patent is that it does this without the need for the OS to be involved, but I strongly suspect this is a commonly used technique and hardly worthy of patent protection - indeed for an autonomous device like a graphics card I think it would be difficult to avoid coming up with something like this regardless of your prior knowledge - you have to have something managing the memory on the card and it has to live with getting it's info from the application because most OS's won't necessarily be aware of the memory configuration on the board. In fact, the only work around for this patent as far as I can see is to expose the memory to the OS and let it use it as it sees fit. I have used one system where the VRAM could be used as system memory (Acorn RiscPC) but there was no hardware acceleration on that system. As soon as the GPU does any work on the memory at its fast IO busses to that graphics card RAM, there would have to be negotiation between the OS and the card to update the page tables on memory and that would hamstring a GPU card.
I could go on but there are other people here on Slashdot who can do a better hatchett job on these patents. But these patents strike me as being 'obvious'. And I'm an NVIDIA card owner too so I'm not some disgruntled 3dfx owner with an axe to grind.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Method and apparatus for accelerating the rendering of images (6,092,124)
Well that that looks like quite a broad patent! Maybe NVIDIA should just sue all the other graphic chip manufacturers! Soon Microsoft will have the 'OS' patent...heheh
-=MeMpHiStO=-Madhu
These patents are so stupidly broad, that if they were upheld, it would be illegal to make a controller card, ethernet card, printer card, or even a computer which can render 3d graphics without Nvidia's permission.
Of course, this is nothing new -- the Patent Office has been out of control for a long time.
I've decided that it's time to put an end to all of this, so I am applying for a patent to the patent. Now, the patent office will have to get my permission before issuing any more patents.
Seriously, though, it's hard to believe they actually have the balls to file a suit based on these patents. I hope they lose the patents once a judge gets a look at them (for being too broad and unoriginal).
Great, now I can't accelerate images because nVidia has the patent. This stinks, I love their products, they are the best on the market right now, and they have to do stupid shit like this.
I can tell I won't be using them for a good long while, they have turned into a shitpile like almost everyone else with some market leverage and greedy board of directors.
can anyone explain what makes corporations do stupid things like this? I mean, we have had the marketing fiasco, the open source code used and then close soured until people screamed (that may have been an honest mistake, but who knows). And now this, WHAT IS NEXT?
Shameless Plug! If you like trance, tell me what you think!!
"I'm surprised that nobody ever considers the possibility of parallel development tracks."
Everyone knows the story about the invention of the phone... they (the legislators) considered it alright, and then decided to forget it.
Patents only earn money for the top dogs and lawyers, forgetting the exceptions which confirm the rule, and they like it that way... and they pay the campaign dollars to keep it that way.
Which, as another poster pointed out, is "patently" bizzare. It's mostly agreed upon that nvidia makes the best graphics chipsets right now... and even if you have some argument with that, you certainly can't disagree that, at the moment, they're currently top dog.
This lawsuit, from a buisness standpoint, is silly, as it villifies the company for basically no reason.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
That's a lie. All the benchmarks that show that have the textures downsampled from 32 bit to 16 bit.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
I'm still a Matrox pusher. Their cards aren't the fastest, but they're solid. They're excellent about drivers for other operating systems and publishing full specs for the cards. I've been using then since 1996 when I got a PPro with a Millennium 1 in it.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
But buy for the hardware, or buy for the software. Don't buy on principle. It doesn't work
The more I looked at your post, the angier I've gotten. Your comment (quoted above) is an incredible irresponsible way to be a consumer. I dislike the way MS acts in the computer industry, but I am supposed to give them my money because Word is better than Wordperfect?? I despise what the MPAA is going to DVDs, and yet by your logic it's ok to fund their legal fees by seeing a movie?? I'm sorry, but the way capitalism works is by voting with your checkbook (think DIVX), and I will never give my hard earned money to a company that violates the priniciples that I hold to. Angry young man? You might call me that, but I'd rather be that than a irresponible, apathetic slug.
And there are other choices besides 3dfx and nvidia, after all. Matrox makes a fine card, has open source drivers, and doesn't waste their time suing the competition. I'm sure you could find something shady in their history, but it's nothing as blatant as what we are seeing with nvidia or 3dfx.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Do you live in a cave? One Nvidia CPU (Geforce 2 GTS Ultra) IS ALMOST TWICE AS FAST as FOUR equivilent generation 3dfx CPUs (Voodoo5 6000), without requiring things like an external power supply (for a graphics card?)
And you claim their can't compete with their chips? Now if only their marketting department were staffed by humans...
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Well, I am a sober owner of an Aureal card.
Aureal practically has died.
OK, how does this relate your point?
Aureal is dead because Creative Labs sued them to death. Although Aureal came out as a victor from the courtyard, it was Pyrrhic victory - it cost them too much both in money and in consumer trust. They have died, and here am I, with a great card and no support.
And here we are, PC users in general with practically no choice but Creative.
(And yes, I DO believe that Creative is evil - I blame the withdrawal of Gravis Ultrasound from the soundcard market largely on Creative's foul tactics (yes, I have a GUS too))
So, companies acting this way should be pointed at, should be shouted , their practices should be talked about - for the good of all consumers.
If you accept such outrageous acts by saying "everyone's doing this", you are making no good to the society. Stand up and let your voice be heard!
Real life is overrated.
What a nice, blanket statement. I'm sure you have specific problems to report, so let's hear them.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Apparently you've already made up your mind. You keep referring to this action, by nVidia, as a (and I quote) "dirty tactic".
Just because an opponent is hemmoraging money like a hemophiliac in a pool full of razors doesn't mean you "cut them a break".
Remember, if you don't enforce your patent, you don't HAVE a patent anymore.
Personally, I feel that it's quite possibly parallel development. But if it IS a case of stealing an actual implementation, then 3dfx, suffering or not, needs to be slapped down.
Being a benevolent market leader isn't a good enough reason for a company like nVidia to simply give away millions (or billions) of dollars in hardware R&D.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Internet Explorer 5.0 is a multithreaded application and it works just fine on my Diamond Viper with a TNT chip. No surprise there. Did you mean 3D games? Or dual processors? Well, Quake III supports dual processors, using two rendering threads, and works just fine on TNT up to GeForce2, in Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Linux. I recently upgraded from the Detonator 2 driver to the Detonator 3 on my Windows 2000 and the installation was very simple. It used the standard Windows 2000 method - open up the adaptor properties page from the control panel, and click the "Update Driver" button. I don't know how you possibly could "get it wrong".
Despite NVidia playing nasty with patents now, for 3D games their cards are generally acknowleged to be the best. Don't believe me, just go read a dozen of the gamer-oriented hardware review sites.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Err... they could always license the patent from the other company.
IMHO, hardware patents are OK as long as they are sufficiently inovative. Software patents are bad because not all software authors have the money to license them (i.e. open source programmers).
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Looks like NVIDIA's lawyers have nothing better to do..
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Seems people are having a problem understanding that the description of the patent merely describes what the patent is for, and does not define the patent itself. If I invent a new transportation system using pop tarts and maglev, I could call it "Method and apparatus for human transportation," but that wouldn't necessarily mean my patent conflicted with travel by bus, air, or light rail.
So when you see "Method and apparatus for accelerating the transfer of graphical images," it's not a patent for all graphic acceleration, just a (somewhat) specific method and apparatus that happens to do so.
This is not to defend the patents or nVidia's action, but just to clarify an often missed point.
Um, you're infringing on some of my patents here...
US 8,299,169 : Method for incorporation of all-capital letters in an online message (I already have an enormous infringment lawsuit going out against AOL on this one...)
US 8,551,212 : Method and apparatus for applying cynicism to an online post by simulating behavior to be parodied, then explaining the existence of said parody.
US 8,999,999 : Method of indicating exasperation by using hyperboly in reference to the number of occasions on which an exasperating event or class of events has happened.
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This story was already posted yesterday.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
nVidia's just like Microsoft! They aren't content at just winning the graphics chip wars, they must smash 3dfx into oblivion!
>>Lets throw some support behind 3dfx.
:)
>Why?
By supporting 3dfx, we show other vendors (like Nvidia) that closed source is not what we want, and that open source drivers is.
>What are they going to do for me?
How about more great cards at decent prices, with good performance, and OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS.
>Some how force the "evil" NVidia company to open their source and make the world a better place?
Yes. Precisely. If customers vote with their dollars, the companies WILL hear them.
>C'mon, 3dfx did the same thing to NVidia back in 1998 with multitexuring
I agree about the past, no one is blameless. However, 3dfx NOW is opensource, and Nvidia ISNT.
>Having Open Source drivers don't make them saints.
Whether or not that makes them saints or not is an opinion. I think that makes them pretty damned cool.
I have owned and enjoyed the HELL out of a 3dfx Banshee card for years. It was the cheapest card that played Tribes comfortably, and it STILL keeps up even with unreal tournament. Any company that makes cards that affordable, and that well made, AND opensource's their drivers (is opensource a verb now?) is totally a saint by me.
Praise be to 3dfx.. hehe..
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
The Register has a story about this
. . .here?
Let's just grab the first one, shall we.
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A method for decoding addresses on a bus which provides a burst transfer mode which may be utilized for rapidly transferring commands to sequential addresses, the method including the steps of:
addressing a sequence of commands intended for the same address to a sequence of serial addresses, transferring the commands on the bus utilizing the burst transfer mode, and decoding all of the serial sequence of commands to the same destination.
--
So, if I understand correctly this patent not only covers every kind of burst transfer ever, but also describes nothing other than the process of actually using a burst transfer mode. Literally the patent seems to be on nothing other than a linear transfer of data over a bus. Thank you nVidia. Exactly what we needed. I haven't looked into the other ones, but I'm sure one of them involves "a method for decoding digital information and displaying said information on a CRT or other human-readable display device", and there's bound to be one on the obscure and unobvious topic of "decoding digital coordinates and rendering them to a representation of 3D space which may then be displayed on a CRT", one on "a method for simulating depth in a two dimensional field by making things that are far away smaller".
In short, I'm getting a bit wound up about the blatant abuse of a system originally conceived to protect bona fide inventors.
I want the fire back.
I must admit, you are quite correct. I guess NVIDIA wants to get them back, and wipe them out at the same time.
-=MeMpHiStO=-Stupid.
Unnecessary.
NVidia already has the best graphics cards (at a price). 3dfx is slipping. Isnt that enough?
I was planning to buy a new GTS, but now Im reconsidering, and might get a Radeon, or even a Voodoo 5500 instead. I dont want to support uncompetitive companies.
/Dervak
Just like 3dfx was, back in 1998 when they tried to sue NVidia over multitexturing.
And just like SGI & S3 who both sued NVidia for patent violations.
Won't anyone consider the fact NVidia may be right?
Cheers,
Justin
"My cat's breath smells like cat food." - The Tao of Ralph Wiggum.
To match the terms of this suit, it would be a breach of patent for "apparatus that uses binary arithmetic to complete a variety of computational tasks"?
Asikaa
Come in, twenty-seventy-seventy, your time is up.
Reminds me of the 'Holy Handgrenade' scene from 'Holy Grail':
"You shall count to three and throw the grenade. Not four, or 2, but three. Three is the number that shall be counted to, and the number that shall be counted to is..."<speaker gets cut off mid-sentence>
--K
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There is no way that NVidia has spent "billions" on R&D. Millions, yes - but if the R&D for their last three generations of cards cost more than $100 million in total, I'd be surprised.
God. obviously there is a method and apparatus registered inside of the patent. We, sometimes, do not have the ability to read the whole patent, only the abstract. It is much more specific than that, 'method and apparatus for accelerating the transfer of graphical images' only gives a 10000 ft. view of it.
Fairly obvious patent? Then why don't you hold it, i have to ask?
3dfx had a jump on NVIDIA, time-wise, but NVIDIA managed to patent this technology first. True, I am a pro-nvidia guy all the way, but i think in this case their actions are totally justifiable.
This Lawsuit brought to you by the number 3* and the letter D**.
* NVIDIA patent No. 5,687,357
** NVIDIA patent No. 5,721,947
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I was not saying that 3dfx invented this technology! I was saying that people are bitching about 'fair chances' when 3dfx has had more time in the industry. And all of the 'slam the little guy stuff' -- 3dfx has always had MORE employees than NVIDIA. I believe this is still true, by a good margin.
I'm sorry that I misworded my statement this way.
Where did I say I advocated the so-called "obvious" patent? I did not, I was defending patents in general. Patents are still highly necessary in thousands of industries to promote innovation. Period.
However, the vast majority of the complaints about the "entire", or even the majority, patent system come from people who know absolutely zilch about it. You take a few outrageous examples, and ignore the literally thousands of worthwhile patents filed every year. You ignore the blinding innovation in the computer, engineering, bio-tech, medical devices, and other such industries. Where is the empirical evidence of damage due to growing patent abuse? Can you name one field that has actually slowed down as a result? Can you name one field in which it has caused a reduction in R&D investments? I'm not saying absolutely none exists, but it is way way overemphasized. In fact, in most, fields the key rates are only improving. You, those who scream loudest about patent damages, understand so little. You fail to understand things which an experienced and sucessful innovator does. First, it is not the PATENT that counts, it is the legal system behind it. It has always been true that it is easy to get a patent, the hard part is making it stand up in the courts. So when you parade the evil patents, you really should be looking at the damages. Second, lawsuits are going to happen no matter what. That is the nature of society and competition--people will always disagree. Even in relatively obvious areas such as real estate and property law, we see numerous lawsuits emerge amongst companies and individuals. The problems are all too often not a problem with the laws per se, but a problem with people. Yet, with patents, a far more vague area, you make a big deal of each and every dispute. You complain for the so-called "little guy", but fail to see the "little guy" complaining in every other non-IP related industry. Would you, for instance, take the word of any failed restaurateur, that it is impossible to succeed without 100 million dollars in the bank? Would you ignore the fact that 9 in 10 fail? Would you fail to question the successfull ones? If you want to judge the viability of, say, restaurant ownership, you'd be better advised to talk to the successfull ones first, not the failures....
...anyways, I've got to run, maybe later.
That's funny, the Det drivers have worked fine since their conception with 3 different NVidia cards of mine. Oh, right...it must be your OS :p
I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all
Do you code? Here's the situation: You are an NVidia engineer and you are writing Linux drivers. You are working on the kernel abstraction layer (for which the source code is included with the drivers). To figure out how to do it, you take a look at some GPL'd code. It's a small amount of code, and it does just what you want. What do you do? 99% of programmers would just copy the code. Save an hour or two. It does the exact same thing, and you are just going to have to re-write it anyway, so why on Earth would anyone care if you just copied it? Hey, it's going into the open source layer of the driver anyway, so it couldn't possibly piss anyone off.
If you knew the open source community better, of course you would know that it would indeed piss many people off. Clearly, the NVidia engineer did not know this. Fortunately, most of the extreme zealots have never typed a line of C in their life. In NVidia's case, the code they used was written by a nice, though rigid person who forgave NVidia for the error but asked that they remove the code anyway. So, they did, within a couple of days.
I'll give you a few good reasons:
If I were the type to keep graphics cards that long, I would consider buying from another company. As it is, I am not. Besides that, NVidia's driver architecture is such that the drivers they write for cards five years from now will work with the cards they are making today.
If NVidia ever gets to Microsoft's level, where they actually slow down innovation due to lack of competition, or if they ever appear to be heading in that direction, I will stop supporting them. As it is right now, NVidia is improving their hardware far faster than any of the competition, and I like that. That is why I support them. I want a company that advances their hardware with new features and faster processors, not one that "supports today's games".
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You make it sound like 3dfx is on their life rafts. Last I knew they weren't doing too terribly, though they may not be the top competitor out there.
Moo
What I see sounds much like the politics of a well known company in a time when they lead the wave: Microsoft.
Remember people what M$ was doing 15-10 years ago. It was suing and being sued. But by that time the company was all inovation. They were making a real revolution in computers. Thanks to them we get rid of IBM's empire. We got a relatively cheap and powerful user interface. Due to them we got the personal computer damn!
However Microsoft killed many things. And some of them thanks to their famous "lawyers legion". The end you see. A mastodon roaming everywhere and trying to bound everyone to their system. Today it is hard to speak on Microsoft in terms of inovation...
NVidia made also a revolution. Yes 3Dfx started it, but it made a lot of mistakes in the middle. NVidia took the lead and undoubtedly lead everyone to a new era of imaging. However we have to remark this thing: NVidia is starting to kill concurrency. Yes they may be the inovation leaders now. We may point some fingers at 3Dfx policies. But if NVidia gets its move, then it's we who are in trouble. Big trouble, because, in a near future, we may face a company that forces everyone to bound to its policies. Do you want this:
A retrograde policy on concerning drivers distribution and development?
A closed market on 3D cards?
A policy of crushing everyone that stands in its way?
No further inovation beyond the financial arrow of "money, money and MORE money"?
Attempts to overturn the current trend of open source systems and free software?
Is THAT what you want? So go and buy NVidia. Laugh at 3Dfx attempts to rise in its lost market. Smile at 3Dfx paying millions for falling in the web of US patent system. But when you'll search for all colors, don't get admired that NVidia can only give you black...
- Write Combining Memory Implementation Guidelines.
This is related to how the processor works internally. By marking regions of memory as WC the processor can issue writes to that region faster. There are controls for setting what regions of memory are WC, referred to as MTRRs (Memory Type Range Register).What a user has to understand in referencing these regions of memory is that order is not guaranteed. So if my application writes to memory locations 1, 2 and then 3, if this is WC memory then there is no guarantee what order they will happen in. If I am just writing directly to the frame buffer (turning pixels on and off) then I don't care about the order, the faster the better, as long as they all happen. But what if I was trying to write commands to the device? If I don't mark the memory as WC then the writes may not happen as fast as if I do. And how do I know when all the writes have been performed? (I don't even know how many there are.) To solve this problem you use a DMA as Intel suggested above. Oh, and don't forget to patent it.
There is also just some relation to the burst architecture of PCI/AGP. If I write ten consecutive addresses as one burst then it happens faster than if I write ten individual addresses. The patent that offends me the most is the Register array for utilizing burst mode transfer on local bus. It basically says that if I used to write to one address repeatedly to give the graphics chip a bunch of commands; instead I should write to a range of addresses and the device should treat them as if I wrote them to the same address repeatedly (i.e. execute all the commands in order). This way the writes appear as a burst write and get transferred faster.
Read it here. Apparently 3dfx has a good chance to win that 1998 multi-texturing case and nVidia is attempting a weak move to get it settled by forcing some cross licensing ploy. I say weak because they are trying to use a DMA patent on cards/chips that have been out for over a year now (voodoo3). Seems like a last ditch effort to me. CP
True, I am an nvidia zealot, but i'm sick of hearing people talk smack about companies. Even when I ran my site (up 'til a couple days ago) I didnt ream 3dfx for making what I considered an inferior product. They make good products that a lot of people like.
Now, The other stuff - like the 'strongarm tactics' and the like - that's utter crap. believe me when I say I know half this company personally. I'm sick of companies getting bad press for normal business operations.
Suing someone who infringes upon a patent of yours is normal.
Deciding who can and can't get one of a limited supply of review boards is normal.
Not opening your drivers that completely rock and must have some special tweaks in them is normal. You don't want to expose your IP.
Maybe they don't want to open their drivers because they don't want to HAVE to patent every small method. If they did open their drivers, the other graphics companies could have a field day with their methods, unless they were granted small annoying patents for each part. Then everyone here would get irate AGAIN when NVIDIA sued over patented material. They can't win with a lot of you.
IMHO, everyone on both sides needs to chill. I work for a large chip company, everyone needs to chill about them too (realize that I am not speaking as a representative of this company).
As a consumer, just look forward to purchasing what you think is the best value. There's not a urgent need to get involved in the politics of it.
Right on, Temporal.
Ok, what drivers have you installed? did you read the faq from nvidia about their drivers, and did you try #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net? My TNT2 works fine, I just dont have any Linux games with 3d worth playing
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
Test all the cards at best API. (Real life use, why would I want to run say Tribes on OpenGL when it runs so much better on Glide?) The 3dfx card would shine here. I still play "old" games like Tribes, UT, EQ, etc. I want glide support. Back in the old days before Tom of Tom's Hardware became nVidia sponsored, he used to do best API comparisons. These were very interesting. Made 3dfx look real good. Now he won't even acnowledge the existance of the 3dfx cards. No huge articles when the 5500 was released. Unlike when the GeForce2 GTS/Ultras were released. Keep it up Tom - your sold out colors are shining through.
that's funny. I bought a promise ata-100 card, and granted, it's a pre-2.4 kernel, but it fires up just fine.... :)
Karnal
IBM maintains this amazing little site as a show off of DB2's abilities...
HREF=http://www.patent.ibm.com
You can search the entire patent space to the early seventies and expect to have the patent copy for those patents. Plug in a search by number and it'll pull up the patent for you.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I don't think that's neccissarily so... I don't think it really came about till someone at nvidia grabbed 3dfx's open source drivers and made a through study of them with the idea in mind to find patent infringement.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
I've tried 92, 93, and 94. I've read and reread the faq. I've e-mailed their support a couple times (and never got a response). I've gone to that irc channel, and never got any solution for the problem.
Frankly, 3dfx may not make the best cards. And they may have questionable business practices at times, but at least they've demonstrated the desire to keep me as a customer.
Ranessin
Actually it is effectively more than 32 megs of ram, as only the texture memory is duplicated, not the framebuffer. And I wouldn't say the GeForce 2 outperforms the Voodoo5 across the board. FSAA isn't just some marketting mumbo jumbo, it is a real feature that many people happen to like a lot, and the V5 blows away the GF2 in FSAA visual quality and does it faster.
Actually, my Voodoo card works beautifully under all the OSs I use, including Windows, BeOS, and Linux. The blame lies squarly with nVidia.
Ranessin
But 3dfx only "came to the table" once they were getting their asses kicked by Nvidia. Do you remember how they were in the days of the Voodoo 2? They were worse than Nvidia has ever been. They coaxed game developers to use their proprietary Glide API, so that games would only run on their cards. And back then it was even illegal to make your own clean room implementation of Glide. They cracked down hard on people making Glide wrappers. At least Nvidia has played fairly. Nvidia supported open APIs like DirectX and OpenGL. They were successful because they had a better performing product.
3dfx never gave a rat's ass about the Linux community when they were on top. Sure, they allowed closed source port of Glide under an NDA, but that didn't involve any 3dfx resources. Nvidia had at least been devoting their own resources to help the Linux community. Once Nvidia surpassed 3dfx, there was no longer a reason for 3dfx to keep their documentation closed. Nobody wanted their technology anymore. There were no longer any risks. They could open up Glide because they could no longer convince people to program in it exclusively.
WHAT THE FUCK was so FUCKING EVIL about this story last night when I submitted it? Yes, I understand that most stories are going to get rejected. That's just the nature of the beast, and I'm cool with it. But when around 75% of the stories I submit that are rejected turn up the next day submitted by someone else, I start to think something's going on.
It can't possibly be personal, of course. But I do generally submit stories around the same time of day, after about 10 PM Pacific time. Maybe it's that whoever's processing story submissions at that time is just an incompetent twit who can't be bothered to accept anything because it might mean that he's got to actually do some work to post it?
2000-08-29 00:27:22 NVIDIA Sues 3dfx (articles,patents) (rejected)
Go piss up a rope.
And the brethren went away edified.
$5.625 last I checked... nVidia was at $77.5.. and they just split!
Actually, It's GeForce - didn't you get the memo?
Okay, 40MB of effective RAM at highest res!
Huh? Not according to Anandtech. Supposedly V5 FSAA is slightly better, but it doesn't "blow it away." (Look at the screens for yourself.) And it certainly doesn't blow it away in performance. In fact, GeForce2 GTS's 4x HI quality performance is close to V5's 2x performance. The article is here
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1288.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Okay, fine. If you're one of the 3 people still playing Glide games, then okay, you'd be an idiot not to by a V5. Otherwise, if whether or you run Linux or Windows, use D3D or OpenGL, then NVIDIA is the better choice.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It does look like it was posted yesterday, but it never appears on the /. main page. This actually happens a lot, from what I've seen.
--
What goes around, comes around.
--
N/T=No text... Duh...
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
I don't know, I had a look at that DMA patent, and it looked fairly obvious. Maybe some of the patents they cited aren't flimsy, but that one looks really dumb (considering that nearly everything is memory mapped these days).
-John
Makes you wonder who really makes the better Graphics card...
Why? What are they going to do for me? Some how force the "evil" NVidia company to open their source and make the world a better place?
C'mon, 3dfx did the same thing to NVidia back in 1998 with multitexuring. Having Open Source drivers don't make them saints.
Cheers,
Justin
"My cat's breath smells like cat food." - The Tao of Ralph Wiggum.
It wasn't so long ago that 3Dfx were suing nVidia for having two parallel texture processors (or something like that) -- this is merely nVidia giving some back.
John
John_Chalisque
Learn something new everyday
--
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
"they make good hardware at a good price with great Windows drivers." ;P
:)
Sorry, had to, OT, I don't care.
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Just because there are some abuses of patents, does not mean the entire system is worthless. Just because there are some abuses, does not mean we'd be better off without it.
Has everyone forgotten that 3dfx did the same thing to NVIDIA not to long ago? I'm pretty sure large amounts of cash changed hands.
I don't feel sorry for 3dfx, they will pay the money, and move on. Lets just hope that they can stay in the game.
(appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
The ATI Radeon beats the GeForce 2 in high resolulution benchmarks, if that means anything.
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Can be found on Blues News here.
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
It sounds to me like NVIDIA is just tired of having to compete so they're going to fight dirty and rule the market.
I don't really care too much if NVidia has some wonderful drivers but does not open them up... it's not like I need top-notch performance. Thus, the reason I choose 3Dfx over NVidia is because 3Dfx tells you HOW TO USE THE HARDWARE in the most sensical way, command registers and such. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NVidia does not.
Now, for a lot of people, it is just fine for them to trust the company to come out with good drivers. (Even when it's both closed hardware AND closed software.) But me... no, I'd rather still be able to use my 3Dfx card in 3 years when it's not supported by the company any more, even with the latest OS and X and whatever. Having the specs on HOW TO BE ABLE TO _USE_ YOUR OWN HARDWARE is most valuable to me.
This is just my opinion, I'm not saying it should be everyone's. I'm just stating it, in hopes that it is interesting to others.
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Maybe they should deposit a patent on neurons, then, they could sue all human being.
Actually, what you can't see in the screen shots is that pixel and texture popping are eliminated with 3dfx's FSAA implementation, while they still exist on nVidia's cards. I think you are misinterpreting what Anand said, but i'm not sure. I have heard from multiple sources that nVidia's max FSAA has a similar performance hit to 3dfx's 4xFSAA, but only offers an approximation of the 3dfx's 2 sample. I have a Voodoo5 and I can say that the FSAA is truly awesome, especially in flight sims. Part of the reason why the GTS has been declared the winner and 3dfx has been declared dead is because everyone is benchmarking quake3.
The GTS is a good card and has advantages over the V5, but I haven't heard anyone who has looked at both say the FSAA implementations are comparable. I do think that FSAA is just on the brink right now tho, true frame rate junkies won't be able to live with the performance hit of FSAA, but I can and I can't play without it anymore.
Here is a quote I did find from Anand:
3dfx definitely has the best 2 sample FSAA setting out of the bunch
I'm not trying to set off a video card holy war here, I just think that people in general underestimate the Voodoo5.
Maybe the fact that ;
- ATI give specs
- an ATI Radeon Open source driver will be availlable soon
- ATI Radeon card are not far away from Geforce2 card in term of performance
are good arguments to not buy NVidia cards anymore
And NVIDIA card's aren't expensive?
LRJ
This once again bashes home an opinion I've been forming for some time, which is that the US patent office has been issuing some of the most idiotic patents in the last few years. More specifically, they've been handing out far, far too general patents. When I was a young kid and patents were explained to me, the concept was quite simple. If you invented something cool you could patent it, which prevented someone from just copying your idea and selling it without paying you royalties. My father also was quick to point out how a large company would then usually change something small and steal your idea anyway, but he always was a bit biased against large companies. Now though I've seen patents not so much on devices themselves, or even methods, but on general concepts, frequently having NOTHING to do with implementation. A Patent used to be issued for a method of doing something. But these days people patent things such as One-Click shopping and international computer to computer trade, and what basically amounts to the idea of communicating with a graphics card. So yes, NVidia is Evil (TM), of course 3DFX is not really any better and has had its own spate of patent lawsuits, so they too are Evil (TM). What it basically comes down to is all large companies are Evil (TM). But it must be remembered that without large companies, the prices on computers and cool hardware (if it existed at all), would probably be much, much higher, so for buying anything from any large company, you too are supporting Evil (TM). But back to the main point (if there ever was one), is that patents haven't done a whole lot of good lately, and their original intent has become rather lost, so like many features of our government the whole idea is obselete and being abused horribly and probably should be scrapped and started from scratch. But it won't be, because our government (like everything else involving more than 5 people) is Evil (TM).
So you would go out of your way to spend $200 extra for a card that performs WORSE just because you *think* that their lawsuit is frivolus upon first sight? Why don't you wait until you hear what Nvidia has to say about this, do some research and make your own conclusions. I've checked out the patents, and they aren't very broad, they clearly state what they are doing and how it works. You should look it up. One of them, the "burst transfer" one for instance, uses certain registers and increments the registers to store the data in a cache buffer before its pushed across the bus. Sounds "broad" to you now? I repeat, Read the patents, talk to Nvidia, and THEN make your decision. I'm all for competition, but when that competition starts stealing ideas from you, you should definitely have a right to recoup.
witty sig goes here
I deem neither company worthy of a license and demand that they cease and desist immediately.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I do disagree that 3DFX and nVidia are the top competitors, ATI has been coming out with some of the best cards I've seen in a long time ... and I'm not talking about the number crunching triangle drawing ability.
nVidia has some of the absolute worst driver writers I have ever run across. They never got around to supporting multithreaded TNT applications (that is, you can't have multiple threads in an application that uses the TNT, even if only one of those threads makes graphics calls). And the GeForce 1 & 2 drivers are spectacularly broken across the board. They're of the "get it wrong, reinstall Windows" type. Ugh. I'm sticking with either ATI or Matrox, as they know what they're doing.
That's funny... My TNT2 doesn't work under Linux. At all.
Ranessin
Well, to be fair to nVidia, 3dfx sued them we the TNT card came out for patent infringements as well.
And, as far as the driver being 'closed-source' - the biggest ideal behind open-source software is that it will be superior software. In this case, I challenge anybody to show me a Linux driver for a video-card that is superior to nVidia's. You won't be able to. Benchmark after benchmark shows that no other driver comes close to the performance of its own Windows driver than nVidia's. nVidia's run fairly close to 100% of the Windows driver speed (usually 98-99%). And (sadly) in all cases, the Windows driver is faster (often significantly) faster than its Linux counterpart.
While I agree it would be nice to have a free (speech) driver, it must be recognized that much of the driver's closed-source components are not nVidia's to release (notably the true OpenGL libraries, in contrast to using MesaGL). Moreover, releasing free(beer) drivers has been a common practice in the industry as far as I can remember (15+ years... I haven't been computing forever...), and therefore there isn't really a threat of ever having to pay for them.
While I feel that an Open-Source development model is an excellent paradigm, it isn't always the best. Kalle Dallheimer put it this way: "I'd rather use an excellent propriatary product than a [buggy, slow, inferior] open-source product".
And, of course, you'll notice that I use 'Open-Source,' rather than 'Free-Source,' there being a great difference between the two. To constantly advocate the necessity of everything to be '100% GPL free-source' is hypocritical unless you are actually developing such software. Otherwise, it's like somebody complaining that they have to pay a fee to access part of a library that only contains books that are in advanced topics, in a language they don't understand... all while there are in the 'free' part of the library the actual information on how to teach yourself to read such books. In other words, you have the right to advocate Free-Source when you have paid the price to do so: Learn to read, modify and contribute to it. Until then, hypocrisy bounds.
The GPL and BSD licences are one of the greatest gifts to humanity, for information and knowledge does not want to be free. Mankind has spent its entire existence in its pursuit, people have spent and dedicated their lives to its pursuit and dissemination. If knowledge 'wanted' to be free, mankind would not have spent such exhasuting efforts in its search. Only recently has mankind made attempts to further conceal knowledge in hiding one's discovery from others. Intellectual property is a relatively new idea, and the use of it has been growing. The GPL and BSD licences (and to a lesser extent other Open-Source licences) have once more begun the process of sharing this hard-earned knowledge with all of mankind. Let us continue the process of sharing our efforts with humanity. And let us do so with reason and clarity. Devotion is one thing, irrational fanaticism is another. And, it is those few irrational fanatics that have started, and perpetuated the concept of Open-Source being on the fringe. Blanket statements have never won converts to any ideal.
Open Source. Closed Minds. Slashdot.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
This message is addressed to the Slashdot collective. That is, the large group of vocal Slashdotters who all think alike and act alike, and all carry the same extreme and often incorrect biases and predjudices. If the reader is not one of these people, then please do not take this personally.
Yep, yep, yep. There they go again. The Slashdot collective. You guys are just too damned focused on politics. Why? Politics are stupid and futile, as I have discovered. (Case and point, the coming US election...)
Look, my point is, you all see "NVidia sues 3dfx" and instantly most of the people on Slashdot assume NVidia is evil. Most of you have considered NVidia to be evil for quite some time (since they decided not to give their extremely-high-quality drivers to their competitors for free (GL drivers have a lot of hardware-independent code it them!)) and more evidence is just what you want. Woohoo, rally behind 3dfx, they're saints!
Well, what if I told you that two years ago 3dfx sued NVidia over a patent the held on multitexturing? That's right: The act of applying more than one texture to a surface. 3dfx patented it. Then they sued NVidia. I would have a link to a news article about it, but my internet connection is on the fritz. Please see Linuxgames for a link to such an article.
So, now who is the evil one? Answer: They BOTH are! Almost every large corporation on this planet has done something evil. Those that don't go out of business.
If you try to judge a corporation on any sort of principles, you are likely to judge incorrectly. Personally, I have given up on judging such things. It is futile. All that matters to me now is who makes the best hardware. And for me, a 3D game engine writer, that is NVidia. If you want to buy 3dfx, fine. I don't care anymore. But buy for the hardware, or buy for the software. Don't buy on principle. It doesn't work.
Obviously, I expect this to be moderated down as flaimbait. Do your worst. My karma has been maxed out for quite some time.
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Because of this lawsuit, my next video card probally will *not* be NVidia (note to NV: but thats in a few months, so you still have time for commen sense to seize control), but I know it wont be a 3dfx either. Does anyone have any suggestions as whats good? Also, do either Matrox or ATI have co-ops/interns doing Linux work?
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
NOTE: 3dfx should be written as shown, with a lowercase "dfx" preceded by the number "3." There is no space between "3" and "dfx". =)
3DFX Was just as bad about this kinda stuff back in the day's. How many people got lawsuits thrown that them for developing wrapers for glide or what not.
Not that it justifies Nvidia doing the same thing.. I just think it's funny how everybody here thinks 3DFX are saints or something.. Given the chance they would be just as bad or worse.
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Reducing the amount of time the patent is valid for is a good idea - within 6 months the hardware/software produced is likely to be out of date, and the company owning the patent will have sold most of the devices they are going to sell anyway.
They are pretty interesting. Lets make a new 3D card that uses them.
So you would go out of your way to spend $200 extra for a card that performs WORSE just because you *think* that their lawsuit is frivolus upon first sight?
$200 extra??? More like $47 less (or $13 more, compared to the 32 MB one), tho you are right in that it performs not as good.
Methinks you are thinking of the unreleased V6000. According to Pricewatch a V5500 w/64 MB can be had for $248. GTS w/64 costs upwards of $295, while a 32 MB GTS can be had for $235.
And yes, I will indeed hear their side of the matter before deciding. I merely said I would consider not getting a NVidia card.
Sounds "broad" to you now?
Funny, I cant remember using the term "broad" at all in my post.
I'm all for competition, but when that competition starts stealing ideas from you, you should definitely have a right to recoup.
This has nothing to do with "stealing" ideas, which cant be done anyway. But patents grant you an exclusive right to any particular thing, even if your competitor came up with the idea independently, or even before you. Who is first to the patent office is the only thing that matters.
But what pisses me off the most with regard to this is that NVidia already has a very firm grip on the market - there was no need for such dirty tactics!
/Dervak
For what? Do M$ have a broad patent that covers 'a large piece of software (known as an Operating System, or OS) that that allows other software written by 3rd parties to run'
'abuse' their patent? if they really DO have a patent to things used by 3dfx, then how is it 'abusing' their patent?
They can't sue 3dfx for past uses, before 3dfx was notified of the problem.
They can get them for everything past that point.
They have a legeal right to enforce their patent.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that patents are largely rediculous in the first place.
is trying to tie 3dfx up with a bad lawsuit. The sad thing is they are already doing as well or better and a good healthy fight on a level playing field would help us all. This legal nonesense is just going to slow down both companies release cycle. On a darker note when Nvidia and SGI sued each other they ended up working together as a result. I would hate to see these two merge just because I like low prices for kick ass graphics.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
The 2 party system wants you to think the election is futile. By believing that you have played into their hands and become docile and easy to control. Only through awareness can the people take back what is rightfully theirs (The government).
Vote against the 2 party system.
Vote for Ralph Nader. This guys got 100 times the integrity of the other candidates combined.
Appologies for being OT but you pushed a button and I felt compelled to respond.
Generally I think that patents are "Somewat holy". They are for something. They have a meaning.
But. 3dfx has now long used these chips for
consumer products without NVidia yelling at them.
If this had been really serious I think NVidia could have found out about it earlier.
Now it just looks like they are trying to cause trouble for 3dfx.
Geek rants since like... 2000 or something.
The thing that sucks about this is that 3dfx has at least been providing the source to their drivers. While Nvidia does make some sexy cards, and even puts out some decent drivers, they are binary.
That sort of thing in theory isnt a big deal, but when you end up with a closed source driver that cant do dual head, cant do other things that we SHOULD be able to do universally, it becomes a problem.
Now, with this lawsuit, we have a closed-driver company versus a very open company. Granted, it took 3dfx a little while to come to the table, but they are here now.
Lets throw some support behind 3dfx.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Uh no, it does not "instantly" close off patents to individuals and small businesses, because they do patent. Many do well, and I count friends and family amongst that number. The legal system only comes in, in the event of a dispute where a resolution cannot be found. What's more there are other avenues for those who don't have the money, yet have to go to court. For instance, if I have a product that is worth 50m that is backed by a strong patent position, the odds are I'll find some investors who are willing to invest. There are laywers who are willing to work on contingency, pro bono, and you name it. And if I'm absolutely incapable of getting any help, the odds are that I probably couldn't develop the product anyways. Furthermore, this legal entanglement also puts the infringing company into jeopardy. In the case of outright infringement, there really is no such thing as a perfect defense. How much do they need to spend to protect themselves? 1....4m? And even then, they face a multimillion dollar award. At this point it really makes more sense for the company to try and acquire or license the patent.
The patent system works. It produces tangible and increasing benefits for society. I don't mean to say the system is perfect and that people don't get hurt. But, like anything in this world, there is only so much that can be done to prevent error and abuse. As it stands now, and has historically stood, the true essense of a patent boils down to a bunch of claims as to what makes it unique [not to mention valuable]. It generally is not a specific formula or object that one can file into a neat little cubby hole. Nor does not lend itself to programming logic. The patent office is just a place where you drop these claims off, to say I filed these claims first. The function of the patent reviewer is to basically filter out the crap, such that the signal to noise ratio isn't too horrible. As crude as it may sound crude, it is effective.
I'd be all for an improvement if I really thought something could be done to improve the situation for the inventor/innovator/risktaker. I just don't believe there is such a simple fix....
Since you seem to think there is a way to avoid the courts, I can only assume you mean giving more power to the reviewer. In which case, I'd ask you questions like: How do you propose getting skilled reviewers? How do you insure they're impartial? How do you insure they give everyone a chance to be heard, and not just close the book? Who pays for such intensive review? How do you avoid the extreme risk aversion [and its consequences] that typifies most bureaucracies? How do you insure that it is reasonably swift? How do you put all the costs on the government and not expect abuse [i.e., people filing because it costs them nothing, people complaining because it costs them nothing, etc.]? Patents are, afterall, just a bunch of claims; there is not a clear cut answer as to what is "wrong" and "right". It is a complex and naturally messy situation, despite what some may claim. Anyone who expects a clean solution to a messy problem without any significant consequences is a fool.
In any case, I've yet to hear any alternative proposal really be adequatately fleshed out by the complainers. They either say the entire system only hurts the inventor [which is not true] and should be dropped; or they say just do A, but give no compelling support for it.
"NVIDIA's filing of a suit is clearly an attempt to force a settlement of our existing patent infringement lawsuit against NVIDIA, and we believe demonstrates a lack of confidence in their current defense," said Alex Leupp, president and CEO of 3dfx Interactive. "We anticipate receiving rulings as to claim interpretation issues in our existing lawsuit shortly, and are committed to protecting our intellectual property and maximizing the financial benefits of our technology for our shareholders. We regret that NVIDIA feels compelled to resort to these kinds of tactics as a defense of the pending litigation. 3dfx intends to vigorously defend itself against this litigation." -3dfx PR ÌÌÇò£ö
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
1) Can anyone explain in common language exactly what the mentioned patents are about?
2) Can anyone (else) point to prior use of (any of) the patented methods, thus rendering [sic] them unenforcable?
3dfx has open source drivers, so in my view they're one of the "good guys", and would deserve this help if possible.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Well, strangely enough, the "burst transfer" across a bus is actually pretty widespread. I'm not sure what NVidia added to get a patent on the process, but almost all PCI/AGP graphics cards do it. You know how sometimes an MP3 you're playing pauses when you open a Netscape window even though you've got a meg or two of the music buffered? The reason for that is that the burst transfer across the bus is gobbling all the bus' bandwidth for just long enough to prevent the next chunk of data reaching the soundcard in time, thus causing it to skip.
I have three machines, all with different motherboard types and/or manufacturers (BX6-2, BP6, P3B-F) and have never experienced ANY problems under XFree86-3.3.6, or more recently, XFree-4.0. Check your hardware.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Read about it HERE
Strange... I submitted this to Slashdot yeaterday, and still some other sites came out with it first.
Slashdot seems to be slipping a bit.
This is just plain playing dirty. NVidia can't compete with their chips (or, at the very least, they think they can't), so instead they'll abuse their patent to drive 3Dfx out of the marketplace?
Their claim's somewhat less flimsy than Amazon's claim to one-click shopping. At least this patent sort of deals with a physical device (a 3D card) rather than a written work (computer code, source or object). But this is still a case where the government granted a patent which was simply too broad.
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I don't know why we keep having these intellectual property bitchfests if people don't learn anything from them.
You do NOT have to enforce your patents. You can be choosy about who you sue over patent infringement. It loses you nothing. After 17-20 years, depending on the granting agency, your patent is toast whether you enforce it or not.
It's TRADEMARKS you have to defend. And considering that you can trademark (not patent, or copyright) such stirring slogans as "Thank you" or "Where do you want to go today?", it's just as well that you have to keep on your toes for that.
R emember this?
Or how about
3dfx sues Creative over Glide
What goes around comes around. Payback's a bitch.
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The article is very short on details (or I overlooked them). Does any one have a clue what the listed patent #'s refer to, and how 3dfx may have infringed?
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The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
What do you mean the competiton has been even? NVIDIA has been busting heads left and right ever since TNT2. For the last few years, there has yet to be a time when the fastest card available WASN'T a NVIDIA card. Voodoo2 was the last time 3Dfx beat to NVIDIA, and it's reign was quickly ended by the TNT. Sure it was still slower than a dual-voodoo2, but it cost half as much, and supported OpenGL REALLY well. Even now, the Radeon isn't appricably faster, the GeForce2Ultra reigns supreme, and the V5 6000 is nowhere to be seen.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I do disagree that 3DFX and nVidia are the top competitors, ATI has been coming out with some of the best cards I've seen in a long time ... and I'm not talking about the number crunching triangle drawing ability. I'm talking about functionality. the ATI All-in-wonder pro card is one of the most innovative and useful cards I've ever seen and used.
And I personally hate 3dfx because when they bought out STB ... stb stopped making drivers for their cards which almost made my TNT card worthless to any new OpenGL formats ... that was until nVidia released the Detonator drivers.
But when you get down to it ... all this truly is ... is a pissing match ... AMD and Itel do it ... Apple and ... hehehe EVERYONE ... do it ... Linux and windows do it ... MS and Corel do it ... KDE and GNOME do it ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Business is fulfilling a need and getting paid for it. This need can be practical (selling food, selling air if you happen to be selling it on the Moon) or indirect (...you are getting sleepy ...you NEED to collect all the pokemon) but either way the purpose of business is to fulfill the need and be paid. That's the name of the game.
It's a hideous distortion of capitalism that people no longer believe this to be the case- and a fatal error- because this new model of Battling Corpora-Mechs flattening the terrain is NOT SUSTAINABLE. It's not a zero-sum game even- it's a losing game and they are all trying not to lose faster than the others.
Any chance I get I try to encourage the people I know, the ones doing small scale business of some sort, to NOT FOLLOW the Corpora-Mech model. In that model only the biggest one gets to survive and when the dust settles everybody is a hell of a lot worse off than if we were doing capitalism. The only way to get by as one of the 'small mammal' businesses sneaking around in the undergrowth and trying not to be noticed by Corporate Dinosaurs (to mix mech-aphors) is to fall back on the business models which make sense- fulfilling a need and getting paid for it, networking like mad which means doing good things for other people to build goodwill, and being able to offer something real, whether that's a product or service or whatever. That's sustainable. That's business. That's capitalism.
Your depiction of corporate motives ain't business. In a very real sense it is fantasy. Fantasy, and a baseball bat, can get other people to give lip service to your fantasy. That doesn't make it reality. On a very deep level this whole motivation is wrong and unsustainable...
3dfx had a jump on NVIDIA, time-wise, but NVIDIA managed to patent this technology first. True, I am a pro-nvidia guy all the way, but i think in this case their actions are totally justifiable.
If this is the case, then the idea is not patentable, since it was developed by another person or persons reasonably skilled in the art. Either company could show prior art, even if it was only in their test labs.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
If anything, their open source driver is a publicity stunt aimed at getting support because they cant get it from their products, where nvidia completely destroys them.
Why do you say this? Free software is about having the freedom to access the source for software you own. So what if it's a "publicity stunt." At least if you buy a 3dfx product you have access to the Linux driver source and a complete description of the register information. That's more than can be said for nVidia, and why (until they nVidia opens their source code) I will never buy an nVidia product and will be taking 3dfx's side in this fight.
Oh, and don't forget, remember the Slashdot story about nVidia stealing GPL code and putting it in their "proprietary" drivers. Or the more recent story about them threatening websites that gave positive 3dfx reviews. nVidia is not a company that, as it is run now, deserves your consumer dollar.
At least NVidia cards work ...
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
nVidia's certainly doing some good things now, but this sounds like the sort of attitude that's dragging 3dfx down--we've always been the best, we always will be.
I AM GOING TO PATENT BREATHING AND CHARGE EVERYONE FOR AIR LOOK I MADE A FUNNY JOKE ON SLASHDOT
... that has been made about 198312912 times before. Give it up.
BilldaCat
3dfx used very similar strong arm tactics against virtually all the other manufacturers of 3d graphics cards when 16 bit graphics (to which virtually all of 3dfx's myriad patents apply) were in vogue. So I'm all for seeing them get slapped around a little with their own tactics.
This is not a case of big evil NVIDIA picking on poor defenseless 3dfx, but more like them finally turning the tables. Go NVIDIA!
*prepares to be lambasted*
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
Forgot to include prices for the Radeon w/64 MB. It can be had for $275, $20 less than GTS/64 and $40 more than GTS/32. The performance is much better than V5500 too.
/Dervak
We can sit, talk this over, point fingers and call graphics companies dirty names as much as we please...we can even come to a consensus among ourselves as to whether the plaintiff or defendant in this lawsuit deserves the verdict. But in the end, nothing is going to change the fact that the decision is out of our hands (GASP! You mean to say we CAN'T directly Slashdot-effect the judicial system?)
2.) Who cares?
Other than 3dfx, of course. Does NVIDIA (look, all caps, won't they be pleased) really want to remove a competitor entirely? I suppose they do, but will it help them as much as they believe it will? Maybe the problem here is that i'm thinking like someone who's primary goal is a job well-done: it would be more important to maintain a lively, hostile development environment to me than to gain a monopoly over a market and saturate it with trash (ahem. sound familiar?). Really though, i don't think NVIDIA truly expects to come out on top here, which raises the issue...
3.) Is the outcome secondary?
Yes, assuming NVIDIA doesn't really expect to win the suit. If this is the case, then the entire industry stands to gain...with one about-face of the lawyer brigade, suddenly message boards and forums across the tech world are once again debating the superiority of graphics cards, - my 3dfx this beats your TNTx that - the media is having a field day with the back-and-forth antics of these companies, and some people are even thinking about which card to buy next in order to show their loyalty. Clearly this is a no-lose situation for NVIDIA, whose monetary situation is solid, with or without the revenue from the lawsuit. What would surprise me the least is if there were some sort of collusion between the factions here..."Oh, it's that time of the month again. OK, your turn to pick out a shaky patent and start a frivolous lawsuit to cause a stir."
-j
does this sound like it could be AGP?
if it is a development that requires a connecting piece on the motherboard, it would make sense that NvIDiA wait until a wide range of motherboards accepted it. Even perhaps making it SEEM like it's a freely useable standard technology...
and only once it's used on all motherboards become the sole-provider of the parts that connect to it.
maybe they released just the motherboard half of AGP as free and kept the on-card half to themselves...
(i'll have to admit to being a little in the dark about what the patents really refer to tho)
one can loose their rights to a patent if they don't defend it tho' (or is that trademark?)
maybe, by waiting so long nvidia will loose the right to be such crybabies
either way ... that company sure is being a dick
The patents in question are:
I'm surprised that nobody ever considers the possibility of parallel development tracks.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I agree. I know they have to protect their brand names and such, but isn't that a little much. They should have added:
... and all capital letters shall be typed by depressing the left shift key for letters typed with the right hand and the right shift key for letters typed with the left hand. Using the Caps Lock key is strictly forbidden, and constitutes improper use of trademarks and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This is supposed to be great art. So why does it look like a bunch of decapitated naked people? -- Calvin
Well this is quite a Microsoft-esque tactic if I've ever seen one. Let's just kill off the small little competitor! My opinion of NVIDIA really dropped today after reading the news of this case. Aren't they doing enough damage to 3DFX already? 3DFX was making some kick ass chipsets before NVIDIA started whoopin ass in the 3D scene, so we gotta pay em some respect for basically starting the whole 3D revolution.
I guess NVIDIA is just getting a little bit too greedy. I guess their outrageous share prices aren't enough for them...
-=MeMpHiStO=-Yet again we see some company with a fairly obvious patent trying to stifle their competitors by suing them for using their patented technology. In the area of computers we don't need patents as they cause more harm than good. Just imagine if someone creates a new piece of hardware with functionality that you couldn't imagine at the moment. They then patent the idea, another company comes up with an idea to improve upon this but can't do anything as it violates the patent.
If we really must have patents on hardware and software then we should reduce the amount of time they're valid for as this is a very fast moving industry.
nt
This is the same thing 3dfx did to nVidia a couple years ago, market leader suing over a stupid patent. I hope they both somehow manage to loose exclusive patent rights on this ...
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
What the heck? This article was already posted two days ago.
link here or if you have the "Older Stuff" slashbox it should be there too.
http://www.talknerdy.org
The patents look a lot like some things that went on in the early days of computer graphics. At the NYIT computer graphics lab in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we had Genisco frame buffers connected to the Unibus through an adapter we made that had address-processing capabilities using the Genisco processor to handle bus transactions. We did DMA to this device from scanners, and to film recorders, in ways that seem similar to the patents. Probable authors would be Lance Williams, Garland Stern, Alvy Ray Smith, Ed Catmull. The only question I have is what we published about this way back then.
Bruce Perens.
Current Patent Issues Within Europe And much of that global technology runs on software. The US patent system has attracted a lot of bad press over the patenting of software. Europe looks set to tread the same path doesn't it?
The principle of patenting software which meets certain conditions is now accepted in Europe. However, it is not clear that Europe has to imitate precisely the US approach. We need to talk about it, and we have a running dialogue about this with both the US and Japan.
Taken from an Interview with Alison Brimelow, Chief Executive, UK Patent Office
http://www.derwent.com/news/guest/brimelow1.html
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
No...but I'm sure they can buy one real quick. 8^)
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
3dfx also sued anyone who tried to make a glide wrapper, as well as sued nvidia over patents not to long ago.
If anything, their open source driver is a publicity stunt aimed at getting support because they cant get it from their products, where nvidia completely destroys them.
I mean come on, their last good card was the Voodoo2. I happen to like things like 32bit color.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
C'mon ppl. Technology is moving so fast that patents have very little value anymore. Sure, they give engineers bragging rights, "Ha! I did it first." But other than that, I think that patents have become pretty meaningless, considering all the lawsuits over patents.
Really, you may think this is flamebait, but it is my opinion.
Here's the links to the patents ... pretty interesting stuff if you ask me
6,092,124 Method and apparatus for accelerating the rendering of images
6,023,738 Method and apparatus for accelerating the transfer of graphical images
5,758,182 DMA controller translates virtual I/O device address received directly from application program command to physical i/o device address of I/O device on device bus
5,721,947 Apparatus adapted to be joined between the system I/O bus and I/O devices which translates addresses furnished directly by an application program
5,687,357 Register array for utilizing burst mode transfer on local bus
This seems the new way of get rid of your competion sue them tie them up in a lawsuit for so long that they can not spend money on other things.
If you can't beat 'em -- sue em and drive them out of business. So when's Micro$oft going to sue 'linux'? 8^)
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!