Hardware patents

AMD Patents a Compression Method That Makes Unpacking Data Faster by Design

AMD is patenting a way to make compressed data easier to unpack — not by improving the decompressor, but by quietly constraining…

AMD Patents a Way to Decode Video Using Built-In JPEG Hardware

AMD's chips already contain dedicated JPEG-decoding hardware — and a new patent describes a way to trick that existing hardware into decoding…

AMD Patents a System That Learns Film Grain From Photos and Copies It Exactly

Film grain is one of those things that's easy to feel but surprisingly hard to fake. AMD has filed a patent for…

Disney Patents a System That Projects Live Video onto Moving Ride Cars

Disney has patented a way to turn the ride vehicle itself into a screen — projecting content directly onto moving cars and…

AMD Patents a Way to Make Broken Data Center Chips Point to Themselves

When a GPU fails inside a massive server rack stuffed with hundreds of identical chips, finding the right one without a map…

AMD's New Patent Wants to Strip a Memory Chip Out of Every Graphics Card

AMD is exploring a way to strip a small but ever-present memory chip out of graphics cards entirely — letting the CPU's…

Intel's New Patent Replaces Quantum Computer Wiring with Beams of Light

Sony Patents a Camera Motor That Moves Each Lens Element on Its Own

Most camera lenses move their focusing elements together, like a single piston. Sony is patenting a motor that lets multiple lens elements…

Sony Patents a Camera Chip That Keeps Its Circuits from Interfering with Each Other

Sony's semiconductor arm is filing patents on a camera chip design that physically carves out separate zones for different electronic components —…

Sony's New Patent Lets Camera Pixels Share Storage to Capture More Light

Sony is patenting a way to link neighboring pixel circuits in a camera sensor so they can pool their charge-storage capacity —…

Sony's New Patent Keeps Tracking Cameras Off Until Something Worth Tracking Gets Close

Sony has filed a patent for a positioning system where cameras don't bother turning on unless the thing they're supposed to track…

Sony Patents a Way to Stop Camera Pixels from Interfering with Each Other

Every time a digital camera converts light into data, it creates electrical noise that can corrupt nearby pixels. Sony's new patent describes…