Woah! Rambus considering going after NVidia?!

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AndyHui

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member<br>AT FAQ M
Oct 9, 1999
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Sunny129: nVidia is being gone after not because they make RAM, but because RAMBUS believe that they should be paid for the RAM controller that goes into the Crush chipset.

Czar: AMD certainly did not come up with SIMD.....Intel's implementation came before AMD's: MMX. MMX is a set of Integer SIMD instrutions. The more useful SSE/SSE2 and 3DNow! are floating point SIMD instrutions.
 

jpprod

Platinum Member
Nov 18, 1999
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And to divulge deeper into history of SIMD; First operational Single Instruction Multiple Data instruction set was implemented in a supercomputer (64 x 64bit CPUs at 13MHz - LOL :D) called Illiac IV in 1972. After that, there has been several chips out there with SIMD implementations. Intel's MMX was just the first one in a x86-complicant chip.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
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And everybody thought Microsoft were bad,Rambus is 10x worst.I hope they get split up into small pieces &amp; dissapear down a drain.

:)
 

rickn

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 1999
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<< However Rambus violated their agreement with JEDEC (that any JEDEC member agrees to when joining) by filing patents on stuff discussed/developed in JEDEC without telling JEDEC (i.e. the SDRAM ones they claim they own). They also didn't disclose all pending patent filings that they had at the time they joined JEDEC (another agreement breach). So what this means is that the patents they claim they own that deal with SDRAM shouldn't be valid because if anybody should own them, it should be JEDEC, or some member of JEDEC. >>




Actually, you are incorrect. They never did officially join. They were in a lot of meetings, but they had never formally joined JEDEC
 

Spook

Platinum Member
Nov 29, 1999
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Well, its a good thing they have all those lawyers, they can help with the bankruptcy, how many lawsuits can they handle before they come back and crush themselves...
 

Noriaki

Lifer
Jun 3, 2000
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Auric:

I agree with you that Rambus is an IP company and has the right to defend their IP in court. No one is b*tching about Rambus's right to charge for RDRAM use...we just don't think that Rambus Inc, fairly owns the rights to SDRAM/DDR SDRAM and that their trying to put forward that they designed it, when we all know JEDEC designed it. I don't know how the arragements work in this situation becuase I don't know much about JEDEC's legal status nor the legalities involved in this anyways. But the fact remains, JEDEC developed Synchronous DRAM not Rambus, and Rambus is trying to charge everyone for it.

That's like me stealing your car and then trying to sell it back to you, would you just up and pay me for it (if you would, would you mind telling me what your car looks like?)? I don't think so..you'd take me to court..this is a little more complex than that...but that's the general idea and why we hate Rambus Inc. so much (note the Inc., this is a comment on the company, not the memory type RDRAM).


I hope that they go after MS next.
Intel, Microsoft, nVidia and Micron (and Infineon?) can then have good incentive to gang bang Rambust.
 
Jun 13, 2000
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Al Gore- &quot;I invented the internet, the car, heck i invented everything&quot; (this quote has been slightly changed by me ;) )
RamBu$t- &quot;We invented rdram, sdram, ddrram, heck we invented all ram and everbody else must pay us for using it, and if you make another ram well guess what we invented that one to&quot; ( this quote has been writen by me but it sounds like RamBu$t's moto ;)
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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Rambus's patents were filed in 1990!

The JEDEC meetings were in the mid-90's!!!!

Jedec kept no meeting minutes and no membership rosters, apparently.
We don't even know the dates of the meetings, or if Rambus was even a member of JEDEC.

While various changes may have been made to some of the Rambus patent applications
while they were being approved (they were filed YEARS before the JEDEC meetings), we
have no way of knowing what the relationship was of those changes to the JEDEC meetings.
It is only speculation that Rambus incorporated items being discussed at JEDEC meetings
into the patents. And, even if this did happen (just for the sake of argument), it may not
have been material to the actual substance of the patent.


All that said, the JEDEC meetings NEVER produced a working open-standard SDRAM memory
ANYWAY. It remained for INTEL to develop an SDRAM standard that actually worked, and
this was a few years later still.

Further, SDRAM aside, DDR remains an entirely separate issue from SDRAM. Rambus has patents,
separate from the SDRAM patents, covering DDR that the memory makers are also trying to
invalidate. However, DDR was a MUCH later development for the memory makers other than
Rambus, and DDR was NOT discussed at the JEDEC meetings, while Rambus' patents covering
DDR were also filed from 1990 to 1992. So, even if the Jedec argument holds and the SDRAM
patents are invalidated, that won't, in and of itself, invalidate the DDR patents.



Finally, the courts presume that the patents are valid and the burden of proof is
on Micron, et. al., to PROVE -- in the legal sense -- that they are invalid.
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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There are reasons Rambus is cleaning up in court, and it is not because they are criminals... Have any of you guys ever even considered that, perhaps, Rambus is actually protecting something that is rightfully thiers... (...intelectual property that is)? I believe the courts, jurors, and many memory manufacturers are coming to grip with that belief.
 

superbaby

Senior member
Aug 11, 2000
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flokster,

That might be true considering that many of the memory manufacturers have settled with Rambus, probably their patents DO hold up.

But it's more the principle of the thing which has us all ticked off. They are leeching off the efforts of other people just because they hold some papers. All they've done is released upon us the horror that is RDRAM and then gone and literally retarded the spread of DDR as a replacement for SDRAM.

Technology doesn't advance with companies like Rambus running around with lawyers. And that's what personally pisses me off.

God forbid my next video card has the letters RDRAM stamped on them.
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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<< ...people just because they hold some papers. >>



...perhaps

<< some papers >>

, or intelectual properties are the actual backbone of many company's existance to this day. Maybe some of these memory companies i.e. Micron did &quot;borrow&quot; some ideas that they should be paying for....
 

Akaz1976

Platinum Member
Jun 5, 2000
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<< They are leeching off the efforts of other people just because they hold some papers. >>



Assuming that RAMBUS did R&amp;D the technology that is being used by Micron, nVidia etc (Big Assumption) then it is these companies that are &quot;leeching off efforts of&quot; RAMBUS.

So the whole thing really boils down to the following statement being true or not:



<< RAMBUS did R&amp;D the technology that is being used by Micron, nVidia etc >>



If its true then RAMBUS is innocent here, it not ...............

Akaz
 

FastD

Member
Nov 24, 2000
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Hmmm.. Is it alowed for a company to totally control a market in the way that Rambus wants?? The memory industry is very important. Without memory the world would litterarily stop!

Will they really let one company control something as crucial as that??

Seems weird that they would since they won't let Microsoft integrate IE in windows.


Just a thought.

/patrik
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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...and indications (memory manufacturers caving in left &amp; right) point to that statement possibly being true.
 

superbaby

Senior member
Aug 11, 2000
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I agree with flokster, that memory manufacturers are settling left and right probably indicates that in court, their patents do hold up and memory manufacturers perhaps owe something to Rambus.

But I hard it hard to believe Rambus did any significant R&amp;D into SDRAM/DDR to warrant them running around collecting royalties.

Perhaps someone could explain better who really came up with SDRAM/DDR.
 

Akaz1976

Platinum Member
Jun 5, 2000
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may be rambus came up with the memory industry equavalent of the &quot;Wheel&quot;. u make a car u pay royalty. u make a a machine with cogs u pay royalty etc.

:p
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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I find it troubling that memory architectures are not open standard as well, but many things in life that I find pleasing are not open standards...&amp; I still pay up.
 

BoberFett

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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I have no problem with Rambus drawing royalties if they legitimately hold a patent.* But it is bothersome that we still haven't heard the facts in this case. It is suspect that companies are settling out of court left and right. You'd think if the patent claims weren't substantive these companies would fight since the royalties stand to cost them a small fortune. Perhaps Rambus does have a legitimate claim, but us mere mortals won't know the details until one of these suits goes to trial and becomes public record.


*I think the current patent laws need major reworking, but that's a different rant :)
 

Dulanic

Diamond Member
Oct 27, 2000
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The point is lets say Rambus does have legitimate pantents..... They are still leaching.... Micron and everyone else didnt go steal the tech from Rambus. Rambus never made SDRAM, noone said hey look at this stuff lets make some.... The other companies went out and made SDRAM and developed it while all Rambus did was go and file some papers. This to me means Rambus is a leach. My idea of a buisness is not one that patents stuff never makes it then charges everyone else when they develop it and manufacter it.... Rambus is a leach there is no denying it. And BTW they didnt patent SDRAM, they pantented a few technologies used it it but thats it.
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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Dulanic, I don't think you understand. If Rambus Inc. patented certain intelectual properties that so many of these memory manufacturers use in the construction &amp; development of memory chips, then it is Rambus' capatalistic and democratic right to obtain monatary compensation for that &quot;borrowed&quot; or stolen IP. That is business. It does not matter if Rambus continues to develop those orignal patents or not. To &quot;Leech&quot;, by definition, is to usurp a product that is in possesion of another. In this case, that product would not exist (or so rambus would state), without the help of its IP and therefor it is the memory manu's that are doing the &quot;Leeching&quot;; or so the courts, jurors, &amp; memory manufactures themselves believe...hence the quick decisions to bow to rambus' wishes...
 

Noriaki

Lifer
Jun 3, 2000
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<< It remained for INTEL to develop an SDRAM standard that actually worked >>



Ok let's just say you are right, it wasn't JEDEC that designed SDRAM, but it still wasn't Rambus and they are still trying to get paid for it.

However if Rambus designed some core technologies Intel based this design on, then yes they deserve to be paid for it.
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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Perhaps Rambus did have some IP development that was part of the final SDRAM product. Maybe that is why Rambus has enjoyed so much success in its royalty crusade... just a thought.