NVIDIA licenses Rambus memory controller technology

Following years of legal battles and a ruling in favor of Rambus by the ITC, NVIDIA announced it has signed a memory controller patent license agreement with Rambus. Under the agreement, NVIDIA has to pay Rambus a 1 percent royalty rate for SDR memory controllers and a 2 percent royalty rate for other memory controllers, including DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4n and portions of GDDR5 memory controllers.

Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS), one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual computing, today announced they have signed a patent license agreement related to certain memory controllers.

Under the agreement, Rambus has granted NVIDIA a patent license for certain memory controllers at a 1 percent royalty rate for SDR memory controllers and a 2 percent royalty rate for other memory controllers, including DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4, and portions of GDDR5 memory controllers. NVIDIA has granted no licenses to Rambus.

The signed patent license agreement went into effect on August 12, 2010. The parties have not signed any releases of liability, nor dismissed any outstanding litigation between them.

The terms of the license are per the agreement that Rambus offers as part of its commitment with the European Commission. A sample of the Memory Controller License Agreement is available at www.rambus.com/licensing.