Intel and Nvidia settle disputes

To use the vernacular, Intel and Nvidia have been suing the pants off each other, as of late, no doubt making any number of attorneys but wealthier. That would appear to be all over for but, with the settlement announced yesterday by the two chipmakers, in which Intel will pay Nvidea $1.5 billion for the future use of Nvidia innovation. This is reportedly a six-year agreement, and Intel will pay Nvidia a lump sum each of those years. As a part of this agreement, both Nvidia and Intel have agreed to drop all outstanding legal disputes which involve the other, according to a CNET story.

On part of the agreement means that Nvidia will not be able to use any of Intel's x86 innovation to build chipsets. The CEO of Nvidia, Jen-Hsun Huang, indicated that he had no interest along these lines, saying “We’ve already said many times that we have no intention to build chipsets for Intel processors. I don’t think you can build a modern computer today without a state-of-the-art GPU innovation. Anytime you can do something in parallel, it’s better than sequential. … Our cross license with Intel reflects the substantial value of our visual and parallel computing technologies. It as well underscores the importance of our inventions to the future of personal computing, as then as the expanding markets for mobile and cloud computing.”"

Huang as well made it clear that Nvidia was much more interested in the pursuit of ARM processor innovation, where Nvidia believes that the future of computing lies. If there is a real loser in all this, it is probably Apple, who will not be able to take advantage of Nvidia chips in the MacBook Air if it uses Intel 13, i5 or i7 CPUs, forcing them to stay with the older Core Duos in order to stay with Nvidia. That part of the equation and it's eventual solution will be very interesting to watch.