NVIDIA Hunts Samsung and Qualcomm for infringing GPU patents

Okay .. NVIDIA filed complaints against Samsung and Qualcomm at the International Trade Commission (ITC) and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, claiming that the companies have infringed on NVIDIA GPU patents related to programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel procesing. 

The company seems to be targeting devices based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4, 400, 600, 800, 801 and 805 as well as some based on Samsung's Exynos. Products that use these chips include many of Samsung's smartphones including the Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Tab.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced that it has filed complaints against Samsung and Qualcomm at the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleging that the companies are both infringing NVIDIA GPU patents covering technology including programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing.

The identified Samsung products include the Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 mobile phones; and the Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Tab 2 computer tablets. Most of these devices incorporate Qualcomm mobile processors -- including the Snapdragon S4, 400, 600, 800, 801 and 805. Others are powered by Samsung Exynos mobile chips, which incorporate ARM's Mali and Imagination Technologies' PowerVR GPU cores.

NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said: "As the world leader in visual computing, NVIDIA has invented technologies that are vital to mobile computing. We have the richest portfolio of computer graphics IP in the world, with 7,000 patents granted and pending, produced by the industry's best graphics engineers and backed by more than $9 billion in R&D. 

"Our patented GPU inventions provide significant value to mobile devices. Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to use these in their products without a license from us. We are asking the courts to determine infringement of NVIDIA's GPU patents by all graphics architectures used in Samsung's mobile products and to establish their licensing value." 

A pioneer in computer graphics, NVIDIA invented the GPU. The graphics processing unit enables computers to generate and display images. It brings to life the beautiful graphics that shape how people enjoy their mobile devices and is fundamental to the rise of mobile computing. NVIDIA GPUs are some of the most complex processors ever created, requiring over a thousand engineering-years to create and containing more than 7 billion transistors.