Rambus, Nvidia Agree on Memory Controller License as Patent Spat Continues
Rambus, Nvidia Agree on Memory Controller License
Maurice Tsai/Bloomberg
Nvidia designs 3-D graphics processors and related software.
Nvidia designs 3-D graphics processors and related software. Photographer: Maurice Tsai/Bloomberg
Rambus Inc. and Nvidia Corp. said they signed a licensing agreement for certain memory controllers to ensure Nvidia products can enter the U.S. market while a patent dispute continues.
Nvdia will pay a royalty of 1 percent for SDR memory controllers and 2 percent for most other types of controllers, the companies said in a statement. Nvidia hasn’t granted licenses to Rambus, according to the statement.
Nvidia said last month it would pay licensing fees while appealing a U.S. International Trade Commission finding that Nvidia infringed three Rambus patents. Without the agreement, Nvidia and some of its customers such as Hewlett-Packard Co. would have been barred from importing certain products.
The terms are related to an agreement that Rambus reached last year with the European Commission. Rambus agreed to license its patents that are related to memory controllers at a rate that wouldn’t exceed 40 cents per unit.
Rambus, which received about 96 percent of its $113 million in revenue last year from patent royalties, filed the complaint against Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia after the two were unable to reach a licensing agreement. Rambus, based in Los Altos, California, has spent more than a decade suing computer- memory chipmakers that refused licensing deals.
Nvidia rose as much as 3.3 percent to $9.26 at 9:24 a.m. in trading before U.S. markets opened.
The ITC case is In The Matter of Semiconductor Chips Having Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory Controllers and Products Containing Same, 337-661, U.S. International Trade Commission (Washington).
To contact the reporter on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net;
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