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Many casual followers of the mobile industry might think Samsung vs Apple is the only battle going on these days, but the truth is that many of these companies have a lot more going on. Samsung, for instance, has a pretty significant microprocessor division that makes mobile chipsets and GPUs used in all their major smartphones and tablets. NVIDIA, a major player in the desktop and mobile GPU arena, accused Samsung of using some of their technology without proper licensing.
Those two have been bumping heads since September when NVIDIA launched lawsuits against their biggest competitors (Qualcomm was also included in that round of lawsuits) for using unlicensed patents. It looks like Samsung has decided to strike back in a characteristic counter-lawsuit.
The company alleges that NVIDIA is using some of their technology, as well. You already know how this goes — both companies try to throw dirt on each other, and one of them will come out the victor after grueling sessions of litigation. There are 8 patents being fought over here, with Samsung claiming NVIDIA to be infringing on 6, and one of NVIDIA’s Virginia-based customers — Velocity Micro — infringing on all 8.
But more interesting is the side battle going on between the two: Samsung argued in their formal complaint that NVIDIA is falsely advertising the SHIELD Tablet as the fastest tablet in the game. They allege that their Exynos 5433 is better than Tegra K1 as it supposedly beats NVIDIA’s chipset in a couple of benchmarks. NVIDIA’s response? While they don’t have a formal counteraction against Samsung in the courtroom just yet, they did come out to attempt to refute Samsung’s claims.
NVIDIA published a graph showing benchmarks comparing speed between the Tegra K1 inside the SHIELD Tablet up against the Exynos 5433 inside the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. If their findings are accurate, the Tegra K1 beat the Exynos 5433 in all but 3 benchmarks in terms of total speed (though many of the victories were only by narrow margins).
NVIDIA says the tests were performed on both devices with out-of-the-box configurations and publicly-available software, though we’ve seen in the past that software skins on top of Android — such as TouchWiz — can produce significantly different benchmark results compared to the exact same hardware with stock Android. It might help that NVIDIA’s SHIELD Tablet doesn’t do anything to change the Android user interface outside of a few pre-installed apps, but we can’t say for sure.
More than just false advertisement claims, though, NVIDIA says they’re more upset that a mega corporation like Samsung is looking to sue small town guys like Velocity Micro in a tactic that serves them no purpose other than to get their main case — the one directly against NVIDIA — to court faster. While we can’t be sure that’s Samsung’s true intention, NVIDIA certainly isn’t shy about telling their side of the story. Let’s hope Samsung comes out to do the same in due time.
[via NVIDIA]
….After sessions of *lobbying* you mean.
The way I’m reading that: The CPUs in the Exynos 5433 may be faster, but the GPU in the K1 is a beast.
Considering that there are VERY few use cases for Android that are purely CPU-bound and in most cases the GPU is more important, the Tegra is going to win hands-down in real-world use cases.
Also of interest is how these devices were benchmarked. If care was taken to avoid thermal throttling for all benchmarks, you could expect the lead NVidia has to widen even more for real-world use (where thermal management matters) on the SHIELD Tablet due to having superior thermal management to the Note4. After all, performance of mobile devices has been limited by heat for quite some time.
Your GPU’s are mostly geared towards graphic intensive gaming, such as that provided in the K1. If you were to buy an Nvidia Shield tablet and used it solely for browsing web pages and social media interaction, it’s a safe bet that you would have more tablet horsepower than you need.
Nvidia FTW
Down with Nvidia
How’s CrapWiz doing for ya
Nexus sucks monkey balls period.
Your pic says middle aged man but your comments say bratty fifth-grader upset over poor purchases
I wouldn’t even put him in 5th grade. More like 3rd or 4th.
lol
You obviously have no clue what you’re talking about. You do realize Nvidia is the major force in the GPU market for PCs, right? You’re just butthurt that someone is standing up to your precious Samsung. Simple minded moron.
When was the last time you actually spent money on a handset??? Are you still on sprint using your mother family plan???? Now you’re here taking about Nvidia these discussions don’t matter to people who aren’t spending money.
You only leave comment to others who are spending cash for what they want to have. You live a sad Internet trolling life it’s no fun being a squiddy20
“these discussions don’t matter to people who aren’t spending money” Says the guy who would comment on an article about Verizon when you didn’t have service with them, and would then tell people not to comment because they don’t have service with Verizon. Yeah, I think I’ll just ignore whatever you “tell” me to do, hypocrite.
“You live a sad Internet trolling life” Says the guy who leaves comments about how “great” or “pimp slapping” Samsung is, on articles that have nothing to do with what you wrote down. Clearly, you do not know the meaning of the word “troll”, since you are the epitome of it.
Samsung has been playing this tactic for a while. Get sued …. counter sue …. Stall and meanwhile profit. I don’t know what Nvidia was thinking when they opened up this can of worms.
nVidia took on Intel in 2011 for similar issues, and won 1.5$ billion, in addition of a few changes to the license agreement wording.
nVidia’s patents are quite strong in this case.
Grab some pop corn cause this will be fun, nothing like major corporation arguing about resolution and graphic performance :D