Intel agrees to pay NVIDIA $1.5b in patent license fees, signs cross-license
Between
slagging each other off with cartoons like the one above and taking each other to court
over chipset licenses, there's been no love lost between NVIDIA and Intel over the past few years -- but it looks like the war is over. The two companies just announced a new six-year cross-licensing deal that will see Intel paying NVIDIA a total of $1.5b over the next five years for access to NVIDIA's technology, while also giving NVIDIA a license to some of Intel's patents. The two companies have also agreed to drop all pending litigation, because you know, they're now friends who just exchanged a billion and half dollars. Crucially, Intel won't give up rights to x86, flash memory or "certain chipsets," so we don't really know if this agreement allows NVIDIA to
produce integrated graphics for Sandy Bridge -- although most manufacturers are going with an Optimus-style discrete / integrated switchable arrangement that
pairs Intel's on-die graphics with a discrete NVIDIA chip anyway, so we're not so sure it actually matters. We would love to see NVIDIA support
Intel's Wireless Display 2.0 and the new
Insider 1080p movie service, though -- and if these two coming closer together results in better Intel on-board graphics that can rival
AMD Fusion, well, things will get
very interesting indeed. Oh, the possibilities of peace.
P.S.- And seriously, what a turnaround for NVIDIA at CES: it's gone from being the company that was going nowhere with Tegra to completely
dominating the
Android landscape with
Tegra 2, finding its way into all
sorts of cars, and upending the desktop processor space with
Project Denver -- all while pocketing $1.5b of Intel's cash while doing it. Not bad work for one Mr. Jen-Hsun
source:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/10/i...-fees-signs-c/