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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/ ... 4E20120127

Jeez, the RAMBUS saga has been dragging on for over a decade. Are we there yet?

I forgot about RAMBUS. Pentium 4 vs. Athlon debate revival anyone? lol. Seriously though. I didn't even realise RAMBUS was still around, not to mention any technologies still being based off of it.

moresmarterthanspock wrote:

:P Seriously though. I didn't even realise RAMBUS was still around, not to mention any technologies still being based off of it.

Playstation 2 and 3 both use RAMBUS.

Not only are they still around, their XDR memory tech (successor to RDRAM) is still being used (e.g. Playstation 3). They're also still hauling other companies into court for various reasons. Wikipedia has the whole sordid timeline (thus far). It's just not as big of news any more since their tech isn't used in mainstream PCs.

Didn't the Nintendo 64 use RAMBUS as well?

moresmarterthanspock wrote:

Didn't the Nintendo 64 use RAMBUS as well?

I believe so.

Hmmm, I could think of a few lawyer jokes regarding RAMBUS, but I'm going to just keep my mouth shut.

The story behind all of this is funny. Basically, all the memory companies tried to screw each other over at once with patents. RAMBUS has won several of these cases... Not as many as they've lost, I think, but more than a few.

One by one, their key patents are getting overturned though. While I'm sure we haven't seen the last of them, their influence is waning.

I think ATIAMD also licensed their latest tech for the onboard video card memory?

Flying Fox wrote:

I think ATIAMD also licensed their latest tech for the onboard video card memory?

That was a rumor about XDR2 being on Tahiti cards.

With RAMBUS's history of being sue-happy, I'm surprised companies still use their technology. Personally, if I owned a tech company, and had other viable options, I would avoid doing business with a company like Rambus. It's common sense. It's like having a friend who has a tendency to steal things. You just don't give him the keys to your house. Problem prevented, problem solved.

moresmarterthanspock wrote:

With RAMBUS's history of being sue-happy, I'm surprised companies still use their technology. Personally, if I owned a tech company, and had other viable options, I would avoid doing business with a company like Rambus. It's common sense. It's like having a friend who has a tendency to steal things. You just don't give him the keys to your house. Problem prevented, problem solved.

That analogy is not appropriate in this case IMO. The 2 major complaints against Rambus are 1) the usual "obvious" patents, and 2) the "submarining" where they were working on patenting tech while being part of the JEDEC committee working on similar tech which they were obligated to disclose. For #2, they did develop the tech, almost at the same time as the standards committee, not like they steal blueprints from another company or something.

That Reuters article was a full page of the same two paragraphs repeating. Can anyone actually tell what patents we're talking about in a nutshell? Reuters was incapable of the obvious.

moresmarterthanspock wrote:

With RAMBUS's history of being sue-happy, I'm surprised companies still use their technology.

Well, just look at the highest profile current user: Sony. Another company with more lawyers than common sense. AFAIK they're also still used a fair bit in embedded applications, since they do have some technical advantages where space and power consumption are more important.

Meadows wrote:

That Reuters article was a full page of the same two paragraphs repeating. Can anyone actually tell what patents we're talking about in a nutshell? Reuters was incapable of the obvious.

Well, I'm pretty sure if you do enough digging (Google for info about the nVidia lawsuit, perhaps?) you could come up with the patent numbers, and armed with that information find copies of the actual patents online somewhere. They're probably related to the optimization of signal integrity on high speed DRAM interfaces; IIRC that's what much of the flap was about a decade ago, and they're probably still trying to ride that horse into the sunset.

The patent system is pretty messed up; anyone with a patent attorney can patent practically anything. I'm listed as the co-inventor on a patent my employer got on some fairly trivial aspect of one of the systems I worked on...