NVidia invented the GPU just like Apple invented the smartphone, digital media player and tablet. In the case of bother companies, they were late to the game but made major leaps at just the right time.

Huum ... what ? I hope you was just do a joke .. because they was plenty of GPU " brands " and enterprise who was create them and sell them before Nvidia have coming in the party and their product was called graphics processors units .. or GPU's ..

Didn't know Nvidia was essential to the mobile market, like they're trying to make it sound in the article. Also that they invented the GPU, really? LOL

Though i agree it's ridiculous, it's more like they invented the "term" GPU

The term GPU was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first 'GPU', or Graphics Processing Unit, a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that are capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term visual processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002.

NVidia invented the GPU just like Apple invented the smartphone, digital media player and tablet. In the case of bother companies, they were late to the game but made major leaps at just the right time.

That's sarcasm, right?

That's sarcasm, right?

i guess so... as Big Apple Brother haven't invented the smartphone nor the tablet (despite what it said in their comercial)... about the ARM architecture you have core and then you can "plug" stuff on it directely in the SoC to be simple. what NVidia point is the GPU "pluged" , not the core. GPU is much more specific to their "savoir faire", as an exemple AMD'GPU don't work as Nvidia's GPU (despite you don't see the difference on screen)...

That's sarcasm, right?

Yes, that was sarcasm. The tablet existed long before Apple released the iPad. The digital media player existed years before Apple released the iPod. There were plenty of smartphones on the market prior to Apple releasing the iPhone. Apple wasn't even first with a touch-screen smartphone. The only thing Apple actually did in the smartphone and tablet markets, was release products targetted specifically at consumers instead of corporations like had been standard practice. As for GPUs, we had ATI, Matrox, S3, Trident and 3DFx all developing GPUs before NVidia came along. So, while it's possible (but unlikely) that they "invented" the term GPU, they definitely didn't invent the graphics processor itself. They simply "borrowed" from those that came before them and got lucky.

Whatever, who invented or coined GPU first is irrelevant. We all know Nvidia marketing is retarded sometimes. The bottom line is that Nvidia, early on, spent R&D money on developing technologies that they patented. They were able to do this because they were early in the scene which is exactly who patents are designed to protect. The patents are the following: 6198488 - Transform, Lighting and Rasterization System Embodied on a Single Semiconductor Platform 6992667 - Single Semiconductor Graphics Platform System and Method with Skinning, Swizzling and Masking 7209140 - System, Method and Artic le of Manufacture for a Programmable Vertex Processing Model with Instruction Set 7038685 - Programmable Graphics Processor for Multithreaded Execution of Programs 7015913 - Method and Apparatus for Multithreaded Processing of Data in a Programmable Graphics Processor 6697063 - Rendering Pipeline 6690372 - System, Method and Article of Manufacturer for Shadow Mapping Don't be misguided by the titles. The patents themselves describe exactly what is occurring and how Nvidia is specifically designing it. For example Rendering Pipeline: http://www.google.com/patents/US6697063 Is clearly very descriptive in what is being achieved and how. Nvidia isn't even seeking to block these, they just want license fees for use of the IP. The same way Qualcomm receives tons of licensing money for it's radio IP. Qualcomm are being investigated in EU/China for abusing IP fees and bribing state officials vs competing technologies. And Samsung lobbied hard to keep WIPI enabled in South Korea purposely to stop iPhone sales there as they weren't compliant. But clearly Nvidia are bad guys here. How about people just call it the way it is and basically what Sykosis already said: Companies have legal obligations to shareholders and they will do everything they can to please them. I don't care if they are AMD, Nvidia, Intel, etc. They are all out to do the same thing, make money. And this patent feud by Nvidia is like nothing compared to what other companies have attempted.

I will report a post, its not from mine, so i hope the guy will not care i post it ..

okay, so looking at the patents in question... 6198488: On modern mobile GPUs, where is the transform module? Where is the lighting module? The specific details of this patent only share some very superficial similarities with other designs.. at best. 6992667: On modern mobile GPUs, where is the skinning module? The patent doesn't do a great job explaining masking and swizzling at all, but if they mean the ability to predicate and reorder vertex inputs there are some obvious prior art examples like the PS2 VUs. Any "innovation" that boils down to putting different well understood and utilized algorithms on the same die is a farce and should be overturned, as this is both obvious and expected in the industry. 7038685: Might have something here, although you can find barrel processors with the same basic innovation that predate the patent file by many years. 7015913: Seems redundant vs 7038685. 6697063: Prior use here - the modernish rasterization process with depth buffering and perspective correct interpolation is predated by SGI GPUs (like in the N64) and the screen space tiling is predated by PowerVR PCX1. 7209140: Programmable vertex processing done by anything with a specialized vector coprocessor for this purpose, again looking at SGI machines for example. 6690372: Who is doing this in a hardware unit?

Nvidia just want them to cough up what's owed, just like Intel did. Remember the 1.5 billion Intel gave Nvidia for their patents on GPU's http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/01/intelnvidia-bombshell-look-for-nvidia-gpu-on-intel-processor-die/ hard to see how company could magically create their own IP for programmable GPU shaders, without infringing on Nvidia Patents for it. Intel couldn't an their biggest R&D out there

hard to see how company could magically create their own IP for programmable GPU shaders, without infringing on Nvidia Patents for it. Intel couldn't an their biggest R&D out there

It's possible. As the saying goes "there's more than 1 way to skin a cat".... If it wasn't possible to do, DX10 and up couldn't require it. Just takes more effort and investment than it's worth for companies that aren't actively trying to compete against NVidia and AMD in the GPU market. It's easier (and cheaper) to simply license the IP from NVidia (who, from my understanding, is very willing to license most [if not all] of their IP for an appropriate price).

Nvidia isn't even seeking to block these, they just want license fees for use of the IP. And this patent feud by Nvidia is like nothing compared to what other companies have attempted.

NVidia has no reason to attempt to block the accused products. That would show they're worried about their own ability to compete, which we all know isn't the case. NVidia knows they can compete. Unlike most of the patent suits we've seen, this isn't about NVidia trying to protect their market share or trying to profit from someone else's work. It's about getting paid what they're rightfully owed for the work they've done. Samsung has become known for stealing....so I'm really not surprised they're on the list. Could just be for "good measure"....