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2024-09-11[Patent Filing, Trademark Filing]NVIDIA Accused of Patent Infringement! Facing DPU Patent Claim Threat

Liberty Times Net, September 11, 2024
Edited by Kao Chia-Ching

According to The Register, data processing unit (DPU) developer Xockets has accused AI chip giant NVIDIA, Microsoft, and intellectual property risk management company RPX of colluding to avoid paying Xockets its due fees through monopolistic practices, thereby violating federal antitrust laws and willfully infringing its patents. A lawsuit has been filed in the Federal Court for the Western District of Texas.

The report indicates that Xockets is seeking monetary compensation and an injunction, which, if approved, would prohibit NVIDIA from selling its upcoming Blackwell architecture GPU.

The report states that Xockets founder Parin Dalal began applying for a series of DPU technology patents in 2012, describing an architecture for offloading, accelerating, and isolating data-intensive computing operations from server processors in a linear fashion. By the broadest definition of DPU, the roots of this technology can be traced back several decades, including developments such as TCP offload engines, programmable packet processing, and integrating compression and encryption accelerators into NICs and other network devices.

Xockets claims its related DPU patents cover various applications, including cloud computing, machine learning, security, network overlays, stream data processing, and cloud computing architectures. Xockets alleges that Microsoft and Mellanox, acquired by NVIDIA in 2020, deliberately undermined these plans.

In the latest statement, Xockets claims that NVIDIA’s use of Xockets’ patented DPU technology enables NVIDIA to monopolize the AI server market supporting GPUs, while Microsoft can also monopolize the AI platform market supporting GPUs.

The report notes that Xockets attempted to negotiate with NVIDIA and Microsoft but was rejected.

Xockets claims in the lawsuit that it demonstrated the related technology to Microsoft in 2016, which was then adopted by Mellanox in the same year for cloud computing offloads for Redmond and other clients.

Additionally, NVIDIA’s ConnectX smartNIC, BlueField DPU, and NVLink switch are crucial for extending large GPU cluster AI training and inference deployments, all of which infringe on its patents.

The report suggests that NVIDIA’s lawyers might argue that Xockets’ patents are invalid, as the roots of the technology can be traced back several decades, with developments such as TCP offload engines, programmable packet processing, and integrating compression and encryption accelerators into NICs and other network devices.

The report emphasizes that Microsoft and NVIDIA might not be Xockets’ only targets, but they are at least the most lucrative. Companies such as Broadcom, Intel, AMD, Marvell, Napatech, and Amazon are also actively developing products similar to NVIDIA’s ConnectX, BlueField, and NVLink.

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