NVIDIA recently filed a lawsuit against Samsung and Qualcomm for violating seven of NVIDIA's GPU patents. Samsung filed a counter lawsuit, of course, claiming that NVIDIA violated six patents, and Velocity, a small client of NVIDIA's, violated eight patents. Samsung also claims that NVIDIA is using false advertising when they say the Tegra K1 CPU is the “world's fastest mobile processor,” as Samsung believes the Note 4's Exynos 5433 is faster.
NVIDIA has responded to this lawsuit, and it's definitely putting Samsung in a negative light for dragging a much smaller company (Velocity) into the mix. The response accuses Samsung of suing Velocity to keep the lawsuit in Virgina where Velocity is based, as Virgina has a faster time to trial than most other places in the US. It makes sense for Samsung, but it feels like a cheap shot at the much smaller company.
As far as the false advertising claims go, NVIDIA fired back with benchmark scores, showing just has much the NVIDIA Shield with a Tegra K1 CPU outperforms an Exynos 5433 powered Galaxy Note 4. In most benchmark scores with an out of the box configuration, the K1 blows the 5433 out of the water. The Exynos chip does hold a slight edge in a few benchmarks, but across the board it's pretty clear that the K1 performed significantly better. At this point, most high end mobile processors are only marginally faster, so Samsung is really splitting hairs over that false advertising claim, but it's good to see that NVIDIA isn't going to roll over.
If nothing else, sticking up for the little guy and standing up to a massive company like Samsung is going to be great PR for NVIDIA. Samsung, on the other hand, is probably going to lose some good will over this. No word on where Qualcomm stands on the situation, but I'm sure we'll hear about this often in the next few weeks.
source: NVIDIA
