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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chipguy who wrote (242137)	10/9/2007 1:08:07 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

How much of an extra discount did SGI get on its Itanium chips when they sued AMD? /Petz

To: chipguy who wrote (242137)	10/9/2007 1:37:45 PM
From: graphicsguru	Respond to of 275872

SGI has sued AMD over the infringement of graphics related patents Do you have a link to the patent number? All I've found so far is According to the suit, ATI has been violating a 2003 patent covering a "display system having floating point rasterization and floating point frame buffering." Sounds like a patent that never deserves to have been granted. Certainly in 2003, it was obvious that rasterization and frame buffering should be done in floating point when feasible. But I can't tell much without reading the patent. nVidia may have decided it was cheaper to pay up than litigate. AMD/ATI may have decided the opposite.

To: chipguy who wrote (242137)	10/9/2007 1:55:32 PM
From: graphicsguru	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 275872

O.K. Chipguy, I found the patent. It's number 6650327 from this article: news.com Here's the USPTO link to the patent: patft.uspto.gov Looks like a pretty bogus patent to me. The patent notes that people use fp already in software, but tries to suggest that it's massively original to do so in hardware. Huh? Of course, you never know what might happen when you litigate, but AMD will have no trouble finding dozens of experts willing to say that the idea of using fp in graphics hardware was perfectly obvious but impractical at the time the patent was filed. It was also perfectly obvious that it would become practical in a matter of years. In fact, ATI may have a slew of internal design documents on the subject. That could be why they told SGI to take a hike.