Samsung and AMD Announce Multi-Year Strategic Graphics IP Licensing Deal For SLSI Mobile GPUs (anandtech.com) 17
Samsung and AMD announced today a new multi-year strategic partnership between the two companies, where Samsung SLSI will license graphics IP from AMD for use in mobile GPUs. From a report: The announcement is a major disruptive move for the mobile graphics landscape as it signifies that Samsung is going forward with the productization of their own in-house GPU architecture in future Exynos chipsets. Samsung is said to have started work on their own "S-GPU" at its research division back around in 2012, with the company handing over the new IP to a new division called "ACL," or Advanced Computing Lab in San Jose, which has a joint charter with SARC (Samsung Austin R&D Center, where Samsung currently designs its custom mobile CPU & memory controller IP). With today's announced partnership, Samsung will license "custom graphics IP" from AMD. What this IP means is a bit unclear from the press release, but we have some strong pointers on what it might be.
Samsung's own GPU architecture is already quite far along, having seen 7 years of development, and already being integrated in test silicon chipsets. Unless the deal was signed years ago and only publicly announced today, it would signify that the IP being talked about now is a patent-deal, rather than new architectural IP from AMD that Samsung would integrate in their own designs. Samsung's new GPU IP is the first from-scratch design in over a decade, in an industry with very old incumbents with massive patent-pools. Thus what today's announcement likely means is likely that Samsung is buying a patent-chest from AMD in order to protect themselves from possible litigation from other industry players.
Samsung's own GPU architecture is already quite far along, having seen 7 years of development, and already being integrated in test silicon chipsets. Unless the deal was signed years ago and only publicly announced today, it would signify that the IP being talked about now is a patent-deal, rather than new architectural IP from AMD that Samsung would integrate in their own designs. Samsung's new GPU IP is the first from-scratch design in over a decade, in an industry with very old incumbents with massive patent-pools. Thus what today's announcement likely means is likely that Samsung is buying a patent-chest from AMD in order to protect themselves from possible litigation from other industry players.
Free Market (Score:2, Informative)
What happened to patents. They were suppose to spark innovation not protect incumbents. Free market my ass.
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Corporations are a government program too. It's hilarious how many people will argue this point without basis. Their only fair point is that corporations protect people from out-of-control bureaucrats in the "justice system" , which is ... you guessed it ... a government program.
The only rational reaction to all of these wildly dangerous government programs is, of course, more government programs. It's basically like eradicating pests in Australia - just keep adding frogs and rabbits and feral cats until
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For most patent holders their goal is to sell them to a big company and get rich without having to run a company to produce it.
The problem has that Patents have gotten too expensive to produce, and expensive to protect.
That better mouse trap you have built, and applied for a patent after costing you thousands of dollars, you find that Big Mouse Trap, had made one that is nearly identical to your patient, but with some minor changes. Now you try to protect your patent, but having to upfront more money to try
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That better mouse trap you have built, and applied for a patent after costing you thousands of dollars, you find that Big Mouse Trap, had made one that is nearly identical to your patient, but with some minor changes.
That's perfectly valid though. Utility patents cover specific implementations, not concepts, so it is entirely possible that those minor changes are important elements of the original patent and that the alternative design really is a new invention.
Any kind of litigation, not just patent litigation, is hideously expensive and incredibly time consuming. By the time it ultimately gets decided, appealed, etc. it's quite likely that the outcome no longer matters all that much. Both sides lawyers just fling w
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It stops being true though if you replace "patent holders" with "inventors that receive a patent."
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My stance is, the current patent and copyright rules violate the very Constitutional provision that allowed them in the first place.
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Patents have sparked lots of innovations in large companies making money with zero effort and large companies enforcing monopolies. May not be the innovation you were looking for, but sure is what our great business leaders had in mind.