Firm Sues Sony Over Cell Processor

An anonymous reader writes that earlier this month, Sony received word of a lawsuit from a Newport Beach company called Parallel Processing. They've filed against the electronics giant alleging that the Cell processor, used in the PlayStation 3, infringes on a patent they own. They've made the somewhat outrageous demand that every infringing chip (and console) be 'impounded and destroyed'. From the article at Next Generation: "The patent, 'Synchronized Parallel Processing with Shared Memory' was issued in October 1991. It describes a high-speed computer that breaks down a program 'into smaller concurrent processes running in different parallel processors' and resynchronizes the program for faster processing times ... Parallel Processing said that Sony's alleged actions have caused 'irreparable harm and monetary damage' to the company."

not quite outrageous

[mr_death]

They've made the somewhat outrageous demand that every infringing chip (and console) be 'impounded and destroyed'.

The US Constitution gives inventors "... the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." If they do win at trial, destruction of every infringing device is within their rights.

Whether they have a proper patent, and if Sony infringes on that patent, is an exercise for the reader and jury.

Do they know who they are messing with?

[macdaddy357]

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony took out contracts on these clowns, and made them sleep with the fishes.

Don't mess with IBM's IP Lawyers

[dreamchaser]

IBM holds a lot of the IP that goes into the Cell. They have a very good legal department. This little company may just have bitten off more than they can chew.

I can see the IBM lawyers now..."Hmmm, interesting. Yes it may be possible that you have something there on this one patent. Let's see..." ruffles through a huge stack of papers in front of him. "However, we've discovered that you're also in violation of these 127 patents of ours. Now, shall we deal?"

California + Tokyo = Texas?

[jedidiah]

What I find a bit odd and perhaps suspicious about this whole thing is the fact that this case is being filed not where this company seems to be located, and not where any Sony offices are located but in TEXAS. Why isn't this being adjudicated in LA or San Diego?

What do they think the bumpkins in Tyler might gain them?

It also seems bizarre that they are bringing suit only now. This product has been on sale to the general public for quite awhile. This means that it has been available to developers for ages. Why didn't this get nipped in the bud while the units were still game studio prototypes rather than waiting until Sony made and shipped a million of them?

Re:What's next?

[AKAImBatman]

No. Their patent appears to be directed at a specific subset of multiprocessing known as MIMD (Multiple Instruction Multiple Data) [wikipedia.org] processors. The key to their "invention" is a processor that sits in front of the various processing elements and divvies up the chores to ensure that all processor elements are well fed.

To be perfectly honest, I don't understand why they're suing Sony and not IBM. I suppose it's probably tactical, especially since Sony is actually selling the chips as opposed to IBM who's mostly talking about them at this point. (IBM fabs the chips on Sony's behalf.)

It's hard to be sure, but this sounds like a patent troll case. The only thing that muddies the waters a bit is that this "International Parallel Machines, Inc." actually exists and sells products:

http://www.ipmiplc.com/ [ipmiplc.com]

Re:How would that work?

[gad_zuki!]

Stuff has been destroyed in the past by court orded (usually unsafe items). They dont go after the end user, they just get warrants against warehouses and then the court makes them dispose of the remaining product. The manufacturer tries a recall/rebate too.

The fact that this is even possible is further proof that the patent system is really useless.

Re:California + Tokyo = Texas?

[mr_death]

Tyler is a famous federal district where patent holders get better results, on average, at trial.

Why filing here isn't considered "forum shopping" isn't clear, but then again, I don't live in the same universe as lawyers do.

Re:Don't mess with IBM's IP Lawyers

[OA]

I can see the IBM lawyers now..."Hmmm, interesting. Yes it may be possible that you have something there on this one patent. Let's see..." ruffles through a huge stack of papers in front of him. "However, we've discovered that you're also in violation of these 127 patents of ours. Now, shall we deal?"

This only works if this company suing Sony has any business activities in this field. Even if they did, the company can stop it and Sony's claim for damage is small one.

Then if this small company win, it is huge financial damage to Sony. So the company are hoping Sony may negotiate terms. This company is like trrorist taking hostage.

The only way is to crash the company's IP position using all available legal means including method to induce huge drain of money for this small company. If expense gets too big, this small company will be broke before finishing the case. That is modern big company strategy dealing with these IP terrorists. Nasty, yes. But these IP terrorists are nasty too.

Re:You don't get it.

[funkatron]

Is it actually possible (legally) to impound and destroy PS3's? Once people buy them aren't they those people property or is there some way to override this?

Re:California + Tokyo = Texas?

[bryguy5]

I live in Tyler and yes there is a larger than average percentage of bumkins around here.

I can also attest that there is no interest in Intellectual Property Rights as mentioning IP is a great conversation stopper (as opposed more interesting topics such as hunting, fishing, trucks, or weather).

But the real reason has to do with the expidited and cheap legal process set up in neighboring Marshall, TX (frequently and well covered in slashdot) that gives patent trolls the most bang for their buck.

The plantiff can raise suit anywhere Sony sells their PSP's so naturally they don't want to do it on Sony's home turf.

Re:Don't mess with IBM's IP Lawyers

[Halo1]

Obligatory IBM v. Sun [forbes.com].

Re:Impractical

[nero4wolfe]

It is not correct that Kodak had to both recall and destroy their "infringing" cameras; there was just a recall. I had one of those Kodak cameras (as that was a much better camera than what Polaroid made at the time). All I had to do was remove the front nameplate and send it in for a refund. The only thing that "destroyed" what was left was that the film it used was no longer produced.

Re:What's next?

[*weasel]

My guess is that their addition to multi-core processing, and the meat of the alleged infringement, revolves around dynamic, exclusive assignment of chunks of shared memory to each worker core.

Setting up and stacking shared memory so that each worker core doesn't have to copy-in its working data set, nor copy out its results and still maintain data integrity gives a huge performance advantage. That is, core A is assigned shared memory chunk M1 exclusively, and when it's done processing, the control core assigns exclusive control of M1 to core B, so it can continue processing; Rather than core A copying in the contents of M1, then processing and then copying back out its results.

Simply shifting exclusive control saves you the time of shuffling all that data between each core and shared memory and lets do more with the same local-memory and memory bandwidth. Even today, most of the multi-threaded apps I've seen burn a considerable number of cycles copying 'shared' data in to a worker thread/core and results back out.

I would be surprised if that wasn't novel hardware design in 1989, though I'm certainly open to the possibility that it wasn't.
Before 1989 I was a bit more concerned with the health risks associated with exposure to cooties.

Re:Impractical

[networkBoy]

In fact, while I was in the camera business, I got people all the time bringing those Kodak Star cameras in to ask for film. When I explained why I had no film they would invariably ask how much it was worth so they could sell it. Whenever I said nothing they would get all pissed because they spent good money on the camera, and I would have to explain that they could still get a partial refund from Kodak, but no one would buy the camera because you can't get film.

Since Polaroid makes money from film (the cameras are loss leaders) I never understood why they didn't work out a deal with Kodak by which they (Pol) would make film and Kodak could continue making the cameras, but was enjoined from the film side (obviously Kodak would shortly quit making the cameras on their own).
-nB

Re:What's next?

[jd]

Sequent's SHRIMP architecture was quite nice for this kind of work. (And you won't hear me say a whole lot nice about Sequent, having worked under Tim Witham - yes, the former OSDL guy - for some time.) The DoD was also developing with DARPA the iWarp [dtic.mil] engine. Download a copy of the report before it gets deleted by paranoid Homeland Insecurity guys! :)

I also saw a lot of self-organizing work on the Transputers. These were fairly low-power processors (but respectable for the time) that could be trivially wired into a mesh as large as you like. Processes could be divided by the hardware pretty much as the hardware liked. Both code and data could also be declared MOBILE.

Weird list of some historical events in parallel processing [vt.edu] - there's a few other examples in there.

Re:hah

[Trent Hawkins]

a week doesn't go by where someone doesn't sure either Apple or Sony for one thing or another.

Re:Don't mess with IBM's IP Lawyers

[oGMo]

I can see the IBM lawyers now..."Hmmm, interesting. Yes it may be possible that you have something there on this one patent. Let's see..." ruffles through a huge stack of papers in front of him. "However, we've discovered that you're also in violation of these 127 patents of ours. Now, shall we deal?"

Unfortunately the defensive patent portfolio only works if you're not being sued by a patent-holding firm. If they're not actually doing anything but litigating, chances are they're not violating any patents, I think (IANAL). I'm not sure that's the case here, though.