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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?"
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.
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.
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."
The Register has a story about this
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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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.
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
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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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
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
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.
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!!!
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.
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.
- Alex has an idea. It may not be an original idea, but no one has been able to make it work before.
- Alex spends a significant amount of time and/or money making it work.
- Alex worries that as soon as he puts his product on the market, everyone will copy it and undersell him as he has R&D costs to recoup.
- Alex patents his invention, puts it on the market, and reaps the rewards.
Patents were NOT created to protect this:- Bob finds himself in a rapidly advancing industry where nearly every day someone confronts a new problem they've never seen before, and solves it. Many of these solutions are of the form "Do process $FOO on a computer, where previously it was done by people."
- Knowing it's a virtual certaintly that others will have the same idea, Bob seeks patent protection for his "invention". In fact, other people are already doing the very same thing, and there's no reason to believe they got the idea from Bob.
- An understaffed and ignorant USPO grants the patent, thereby giving Bob leverage to legally extort money from people who aren't using his idea at all, but rather thought up the very same idea themselves.
- Bob becomes wildly rich by forcing others to pay for the priviledge of using their own work.
Do you really not understand the problem here? Patents should protect you from having me steal your ideas. I can't buy your widget, take it apart, and build one just like it. They should not protect you from independent reinvention especially where everyone in the field can be reasonably expected to independently come up with the *same* invention (tabbed widgets, anyone?). Patents aren't (or shouldn't be, anyway) about rewarding the first guy clever enough to document an idea and run off to his lawyer. Patents should be about encouraging innovation by assuring inventors that their legitimate hard work won't be stolen. Maybe your acquaintences are these hard working inventors. Maybe they're yet another instance of patenting "Do $foo on a computer."I wonder if it's too late to patent getting a "Do $foo on a computer." patent as a business practice. Too much prior art, no doubt.