SGI suing ATI for...well, you know the rest

Oh how the mighty have fallen: fresh off its emergence from Chapter 11, once-proud hardware manufacturer SGI (a.k.a. Silicon Graphics) chose to celebrate the occasion not with a product announcement or by gifting its employees with bunch of iPods, but by dropping one of the ol' patent infringement lawsuits on recent AMD acquisition ATI. According to the suit, ATI has been violating a 2003 patent covering a "display system having floating point rasterization and floating point frame buffering," which in layman's terms describes a method for "software to operate directly on data in a frame buffer" -- apparently "an important resource in achieving [the] enhanced graphics processing demanded by today's computer systems." Now we're not knocking SGI for defending its intellectual property -- after all, other rival manufacturers have seemingly validated its claim by licensing the patent in question -- but is getting your litigation on really the best way to show the world that your company is back on the field and ready to innovate? The answer seems to be yes, at least according to CEO Dennis McKenna, who is promising that this legal maneuver is just the first of many designed to "aggressively protect and enforce [SGI's] IP." Fair enough, but please make sure that your engineers are doing their R&D thing while legal does its, um, legal thing, or else SGI may go down in history next to another sullied three-letter acronym: NTP.

[Via Slashdot]

[Gegejaja @ Oct 25th 2006 7:36PM]

SGI has lose it's mind, SGI will go down in history as we know it.

heck, even Autodesk dump SGI's shitty OS/hardware for Linux.

To SGI, sease and disease.......

while you are at it, Dennis McKenna, go play with your thing that is hanging between your legs in the little boy's bathroom down the hall in that damp basement of SGI.

[Eli @ Oct 25th 2006 7:51PM]

IRIX was/is a much better operating system than Linux and much better technical achievement, it has the fastest file system in existance, hardware accelerated desktop 10 years before Apple. SGI had to drop it for Linux since they couldn't afford to port it to x86. SGI software and hardware was completely awesome in its heyday and only lost their edge when dedicated graphics workstations suffered their downfall.

Virtually everything related to computer graphics today has its roots in SGI's work.

[Mike D @ Oct 25th 2006 9:51PM]

It's sad to see them having to resort to petty lawsuits to turn a profit..sounds a little bit like SCO. They should have just called it quits when they failed to adapt to the changing market.

[Dave @ Oct 25th 2006 9:52PM]

Is it just me or do I see a pattern here...

Blackberry (Canadian) vs. NTP (American)
ATI (formally Canadian :-p) vs. SGI (American)

...

[Revrant2394 @ Oct 25th 2006 10:39PM]

Well it's more along the lines of

Blackberry(Legitimate) vs. NTP(Patent Hoarder)
ATI(Legitimate) vs. SGI(NTP Wannabe)

But that's just my viewpoint.

SGI is significantly more legitimate than NTP, so I guess that's not a fair comparison, however this technology, I don't like the fact that they patented it, it sounds a bit off to me.

[theinvisiblemooseman @ Oct 25th 2006 11:02PM]

Your a little backwards, NTP(american) sued RIM(canadian).

[james @ Oct 26th 2006 12:29AM]

Er, not so fast.. I pulled this from /. :

----

SGI's patent was filed June 16, 1998, and granted November 18, 2003

ATI did similar work at the same time ATI_pixel_format_float

The development history of ATI's document ranges from 9th June 2002 to 4th December 2002

Basically, ATI gets caught between SGI filing for a patent, and SGI having the patent granted. Although, given that SGI have been announcing the status of this patent for the past three years, it does seem odd that they are only sueing now. Maybe they are scared of the ATI/AMD merger, or see that ATI has more money now.

----

So this might not be as lame as it sounds.

[Lyddle Squirrelz @ Oct 26th 2006 3:09AM]

It's a shame none of you know a thing about SGI; possibly the largest computer distributing and manufacturing company to the U.S. Government. The fact that you are so willing to bash the company means twofold; you don't understand what SGI has done for this nation, as far as creating beneficial software, hardware, etc. that has been involved in the electronic progression of this nation, and secondly, you are ATI junkies, ignorantly commenting on subjects you don't quite understand. Silicon Graphics, Incorporated, has been one of the largest distributors to the government, and due to recent downsizing and personnel cuts, has been trying to salvage the failing contributions it is able to make, due to both internal and external complications. One of my parents is highly involved in SGI, and I can guarantee you ATI fanboys that the chances of ATI stealing vital progress made by SGI is almost certain. Please, at least do the readers of these posts the courtesy of researching what Engadget has already assuredly done by finding out the facts before you jump on board and ram insults down the metaphorical throat of SGI; it's not becoming. Yes, they make lovely graphics cards. Get a grip on reality and do your research.

[NeoteriX @ Oct 26th 2006 9:02AM]

So, when is your dad gonna start looking for a new job?

just kidding. :)

It's true, SGI was great and gave us a lot of sweet things back in the day like Jurassic Park and Nintendo 64, as well as a lot of military/government work like you say, but it's hard to deny their fall from grace. As many a failed company can tell you, just because a company was significant and great doesn't shield it from the realities of the changing market.

[Mike @ Oct 27th 2006 1:51AM]

Is it just me, or does the word 'dropping' not mean what it sued to mean? I was confused for half the post thinking that some law suit had been revoked...

[Gegejaja @ Oct 27th 2006 12:42PM]

ever heard of moving forward?

either you move forward or you will lose ground.

in this case, SGI has lose ground and it is just using the patent to sue ati for $$$.

when you are so pigeon hole in a niche market like SGI does, you can expect the worst to happen. in this case, a lame ass copany losing market share.

SGI is history as we know it.