Comments on: NVIDIA Files Lawsuit Against 3dfx Over Five Patents

By: misaka

misaka — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I may not know much about the actual content of the lawsuit, although I suspect it’s going to be something silly, but am I the only one wondering about how NVIDIA’s CEO has decided to use the term ‘always’ here? How exactly is he defining ‘always’? The last two years? Three, maybe? Interesting wording from the CEO here.

By: Svartalf

Svartalf — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I refuse to support a company that insists on being a corporate bully.

I don’t think that NVidia has carefully thought about how bad the PR is going to be over this- or they think that they don’t have to worry about it.

By: Temporal

Temporal — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is not good… 3dfx did this to NVidia awhile back. 3dfx actually holds a patent on multitexturing (that is, applying more than one texture to a surface). They sued NVidia over this completely idiotic patent some time ago… somehow, NVidia got out of it.[br][br]Stupid corporations… I’m sick of trying to decide which corporation is the “good” one… I just want quality hardware and software. Politics in general… stupid… I just don’t care about them anymore.

By: Crusader

Crusader — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Personally, the problem I have with this lawsuit was that it was released the day before 3dfx’s earnings are due to be released, which is a fairly dirty tactic IMO.
[br][br]
However, corporations aren’t monoliths, and I know some great people at both companies (Jason Lundy and Joseph Kain for example)… please keep in mind that engineers/programmers have little to nothing to do with how upper management and their lawyer attack dogs carry out policy.
[br][br]
I’d prefer to see a healthy NVIDIA *and* 3dfx, to prevent one entity monopolizing the marketplace (which would allow technology to stagnate and prices to rise)… unfortunately, the ideal outcome for a precarious situation, in this industry or in general, rarely materializes :/

By: StatiC

StatiC — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

But what nvidia is doing is dirty. They should have brought this up quite awhile ago. They have the upper hand at speed, They really didnt need to do this. That is what sucks about it… kinda reminds me of microsoft. We are winning, so lets try to squash the competiton completely.[br][br]I was planning on getting an nvidia geforce2 ultra when they come out along with the voodoo5 6000, but this might make me rethink the geforce.[br][br]I hope both companies decide to play fair regardless of who is at fault. Afterall… There is room for a few major graphics companies.

By: ard

ard — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Glimpsing through the links, they all seem to refer to some
DMA action.
Anyone remember the 1802 CPU? Or the intel advanced DMA
controller? Or the i860 as a co-pro for the i386?
These patents are jokes, patenting technology that existed even before 1980′s.
(For those that don’t remember: 1802 already had an auto-
increment dma register. The intel advanced dma-controllers
and i860 as a co-pro do understand the phys< ->virtual
conversion).
Patents are jokes anyway.

BTW: if they are somehow converting virtual< ->physical, so
obviously doing some kind a memory management, then why is
it the NVidia card locks-up my computer that hard?
And why doesn’t my voodoo3 lock-up my computer?

By: Skysurfer

Skysurfer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I know what Nvidia is doing is wrong but what about what 3dfx did to Nvidia two years ago when Nvidia wasnt doing quite as good? As I remember seeing someone else say “Payback is a b!tch”