NVIDIA Sues 3dfx For Patent Infringement 187
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?"
Patents... (Score:1)
-- Anubis
Yahoo sounded pretty impartial... (Score:1)
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
Re:Nvidia or 3dfx. (Score:2)
Absolutely. (Score:3)
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.
Hold on a second... (Score:2)
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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Re:What are these patents? (Score:1)
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!!!
Re:What are these patents? (Score:1)
I'm having a severe case of deja vu (Score:1)
Wake up guys...
Re:Hold on a second... (Score:1)
The real reason why they are doing this is to punch 3dfx back for their (nearly as ridiculous) lawsuit against nVidia over multitexturing.
Hypocrisy (Score:1)
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.
Re:These sound so vague, anybody could violate the (Score:1)
Re:Just as I expected from Slashdot (Score:1)
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 [apartment6.org]
Re:Turnabout is fair play (Score:2)
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)
Re:Yet another case of stopping innovation (Score:1)
Re:Patent wars (Score:1)
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
Re:From the Register article... some questions. (Score:2)
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.
--
Read the claims! (Score:1)
More bad patents or a real case of IP theft? (Score:5)
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 [164.195.100.11] 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 [164.195.100.11] 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
Re:What are these patents? (Score:1)
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=-these are the patents in question (Score:2)
Madhu
Screw Nvidia. (Score:2)
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).
From the Register article... some questions. (Score:1)
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?
First guy to the patent office wins... (Score:1)
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.
Re:Business as usual... (Score:1)
This lawsuit, from a buisness standpoint, is silly, as it villifies the company for basically no reason.
Re:Nvidia or 3dfx. (Score:1)
Re:Nvidia or 3dfx. (Score:1)
Grrrr (Score:4)
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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Re:Hold on a second... (Score:2)
If that were the case, I don't think they would have waited this long.
Besides which, this isn't "nearly" as ridiculous. Have you seen the patents nVidia is claiming 3Dfx infringed? "System for accelerating the display of graphics" is one. "System for accelerating the transfer of graphic images" is another. In other words, nVidia's claiming ownership of the very concept of hardware graphics acceleration. Now that is ridiculous. 3Dfx's suit was ridiculous too, mind you, but it's got nothing on this.
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Re:OK... (Score:1)
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...
Re:Just as I expected from Slashdot (Score:1)
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!
Re:Pissing Match (Score:1)
What a nice, blanket statement. I'm sure you have specific problems to report, so let's hear them.
Re:What are these patents? (Score:1)
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!!!
Re:Pissing Match (Score:2)
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)
Re:Grrrr (Score:1)
Excellent post. The willingness to put up with anything for the sake of more toys (things like DVDs, faster 3D cards, etc) is one of the things that lands us laws like the DMCA and UCITA. The companies behind them can point at the consumers gobbling up the high-tech goods and say "they vote. They don't mind." When it came time for me to buy a new 3D card, I went with a Matrox card. It isn't as fast, but its still a good value, and Matrox has never been involved in anything like this, to the best of my knowledge. Giving your money to a company that engages in unethical practices is another way of saying you don't care.
Of course, we'll probably both get moderated down for posting opinions that don't critique the "Slashdot crowd."
-RickHunter
Re:Yet another case of stopping innovation (Score:2)
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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Here we go again.... (Score:1)
"I should patent 'METHOD TO POST ON SLASHDOT'" (Score:1)
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.
Re:HAHAHAHHA (Score:1)
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.
Duplicate story... (Score:1)
Microsoft? (Score:1)
Re:Nvidia or 3dfx. (Score:1)
>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..
Link to story (Score:3)
What have we. . . (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
I must admit, you are quite correct. I guess NVIDIA wants to get them back, and wipe them out at the same time.
-=MeMpHiStO=-Re:What are these patents? (Score:1)
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
puh-lease (Score:1)
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
Are these patents specific enough? (Score:1)
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"?
Monty Python (Score:1)
"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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Re:What are these patents? (Score:1)
Re:Grrrr (Score:1)
This Lawsuit.. (Score:2)
* NVIDIA patent No. 5,687,357
** NVIDIA patent No. 5,721,947
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
My problem is, I understand it better than most (Score:2)
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.
Re:Just as I expected from Slashdot (Score:4)
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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NVidia goes Redmond? (Score:2)
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...
The relation of the patents to WC and Bursting (Score:2)
- Write Combining Memory Implementation Guidelines [intel.com].
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 [164.195.100.11]. 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.
Right on (Score:3)
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.
Why don't you look them up yourself? (Score:3)
HREF=http://www.patent.ibm.com [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.
Re:Grrrr (Score:2)
You are taking my post into a wider context then I indended it to be. I was primarily talking about 3D hardware companies. My point was that people should not be so quick to judge on so little info. Many people here on Slashdot are extremely biased against NVidia and jump on any chance they get to call them evil, while completely ignoring everything 3dfx and others have done wrong. Basically, I'm talking small-time stuff here. I should have been clearer about that. Sorry.
Microsoft is a completely different matter. So is the MPAA, and the RIAA, and DIVX, etc. These entities have done hundreds of times more evil than NVidia has done, and they deserve to be punished. We can feel the problems that these companies have caused. They are hurting us rather than each other. Last I checked, Microsoft, the MPAA, and the RIAA were at the top of my evil list. There is almost no question that these groups have done wrong morally, even though the legal issues are still in dispute. I agree with you there.
But in cases where things are not obvious, attempting to apply principles to the situation is futile. In order to judge cases like 3dfx vs NVidia, you have to know all of the facts, and the people posting to Slashdot attacking NVidia clearly do not know all of the facts. Many people (myself included) are just not responsible enough to make such judgements. Therefore, I have decided to stop judging companies based on small stuff like this. I do not know the complete history of either 3dfx or NVidia, and I don't care to. Thus I will not make a moral judgement on those companies. I will, however, buy the hardware that best suits my purposes, and that is NVidia.
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Re:What are these patents? (Score:2)
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.
Re:What are these patents? (Score:2)
Search for the Lost Story (Score:2)
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Re:OK... (Score:2)
John
Bullshit. (Score:2)
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.
Re:OK... (Score:2)
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.
IMHO (Score:2)
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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Their execs are all violating my patent... (Score:2)
I deem neither company worthy of a license and demand that they cease and desist immediately.
Re:Pissing Match (Score:2)
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.
Turnabout is fair play (Score:2)
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.
Just as I expected from Slashdot (Score:5)
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 [linuxgames.com] 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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Re:OK... (Score:2)
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.
Seems like Nvidia (Score:2)
Nvidia or 3dfx. (Score:4)
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.
Flawed? Yes. Inferior? Not likely. (Score:2)
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.
Prior use? (Score:2)
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.
OK... (Score:2)
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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how about when 3dfx sued NVIDIA? (Score:2)
Or how about
3dfx sues Creative over Glide [slashdot.org]
What goes around comes around. Payback's a bitch.
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What do you mean even? (Score:2)
Pissing Match (Score:3)
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 ...
No it's not (Score:2)
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...
Re:why? (Score:2)
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.
Always the leader? (Score:2)
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.
So what? (Score:3)
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*
Re:puh-lease (Score:2)
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
Who wins? Who cares? Is the outcome secondary? (Score:2)
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
What are these patents? (Score:5)
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!!!
Why? (Score:3)
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 another case of stopping innovation (Score:3)
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.
Re:What are these patents? (Score:2)
Prior art (Score:3)
Re:Lets talk Glide performance. (Score:2)
A) Though courted developers to use only Glide.
B) They dragged their feet on supporting DirectX and OpenGL. Wheras TNT had full DirectX 6 support from it's release, 3DFx took more than a month to release theirs. Wheras NVIDIA did (and still DOES) have great OpenGL ICDs, 3DFx used mini-drivers for the longest time and still doesn't have an ICD as good as NVIDIA's.
C) They sued NVIDIA over multitexturing.
D) They strong-armed stores into putting "3DFx Required" stickers on games that supported Direct3D and OpenGL until the judge forced them to stop.
Support for an API more propriotary than Direct3D? On Slashdot? Where are your PRIORITIES!
Face it, Glide is a dead API. Even 3DFx realizes that. And the only reason that Glide is faster in some programs is because those games are written primarily for glide. Besides, Glide-only games are few and far between and none of the acutally need all the power of the newer cards.
Re:What are these patents? (Score:2)
Re:Just as I expected from Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:Just as I expected from Slashdot (Score:2)
If the driver quality is so good, why did nVidia have to steal GPL code to get their drivers to work? The fact is, both Matrox and 3dfx have realeased open source drivers for Linux - there's no reason to support nVidia until they do as well.
All that matters to me now is who makes the best hardware. And for me, a 3D game engine writer, that is NVidia.
I feel sorry for you, that you have no perspective of your one personal future well-being. What should matter to you is having access to the information and the source code of the products you buy. That is the only way to insure you don't get stuck with a legacy product that will not work in the future, or that the disaster that Microsoft has inflicted on the PC world is not replicated in the hardware realm should a closed-source graphics card maker take control of the market.
Re:Just as I expected from Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:Business as usual... (Score:2)
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Re:Bullshit. (Score:4)
- 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.
why? (Score:2)
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.
Links to the patents (Score:2)
6,092,124 Method and apparatus for accelerating the rendering of images [164.195.100.11]
6,023,738 Method and apparatus for accelerating the transfer of graphical images [164.195.100.11]
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 [164.195.100.11]
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 [164.195.100.11]
5,687,357 Register array for utilizing burst mode transfer on local bus [164.195.100.11]
Business as usual... (Score:2)
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Re:OK... (Score:2)