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Rambus Comes Out of Dark, Sues Nvidia for Patent Infringement
Posted by Kit Eaton at 6:23 PM on July 11, 2008
It's been a while since we've heard anything about memory maker Rambus, but the company has come back into the light to sue Nvidia for patent infringement. Rambus thinks that Nvidia's use of SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM in their products violates 17 (count 'em... 17!) patents that Rambus owns. Those chips sit inside all sorts of Nvidia gear, and apparently Rambus has been trying for a settlement for years. Now it's using the legal system to claim cash for the damages. Bad news for Nvidia, but Rambus is still apparently trying "to continue discussions with Nvidia to reach a negotiated settlement." I bet. [BusinessWire]
Memory maker Rambus has unveiled its Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative with the goal to develop a new memory architecture capable of achieving 1TB/sec bandwidth. The plan is to push the data rate to a whopping 32X —which can provide a 16Gbps signaling rate with a 500MHz clock. Compare that with to the 2bits /1Gbps provided by conventional DDR at the same rate. Add differential signaling an both the data and command/address channels and you have yourself one blazingly fast system. 
