Rambus and NVIDIA memory duel finally ends

The epic battle over NVIDIA memory tech has finally concluded; Rambus granted another long-expected victory and a chunk of NVIDIA cash.

Rambus, the manufacturer and designer of the now-ancient RDRAM sticks, have finally settled their court case against NVIDIA that was brought to the forefront just over two years prior.

The company was after "injunctive relief barring the infringement, contributory infringement, and inducement to infringe the Rambus patents, as well as monetary damages", as we reported in July 2008.

Both companies have settled on a royalty scheme, and rather than a large lump sum of cash, NVIDIA will instead give a percentage of sales to Rambus.

As explained in the press release:

"Rambus has granted NVIDIA a patent licence for certain memory controllers at a one percent royalty rate for SDR memory controllers and a two percent royalty rate for other memory controllers, including DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4, and portions of GDDR5 memory controllers." (our italics)

Rambus are infamously known as a patent troll in the semiconductor industry, and have sued practically every manufacturer of flash chips under the sun - most recent being Samsung Electronics, who must pay Rambus $900 million in installments by 2015.

The GTX480 'Fermi' die, with memory controller visible as the strip through the centre.

How this will affect NVIDIA prices remains to be seen, though the timing couldn't be worse for the tech company - the NVIDIA Q2 2011 financial report pegs them as losing $141 million. Ouch.

Though this net loss was attributed to stock clearances and inventory write-downs (as seen in the falling prices of the above GTX480 cards), NVIDIA remains hopeful for their GTX460 product that recently launched.

Only time will tell who Rambus sue next.