“The licensing dispute that has prevented NVIDIA from building controller chips for Intel’s latest CPUs may finally be coming to a close. Late last week, a Bloomberg report cited inside sources that claim the two companies are in talks to settle the matter out of court. While both Intel and NVIDIA would benefit from a settlement – for instance, by avoiding legal fees for protracted litigation – Apple also stands to gain.”
Will there one day be an Intel IGP that doesn’t suck? I’m sure Apple have noticed AMD APU design that’s eating Intel’s Atom for lunch. We’ve always speculated that Apple could switch to AMD, but I only see that every being possible on the low, portable end like the Air. This news probably delays such happenings.
The basis of the article is that both “intel and nvidia would benefit from a settlement” even though he author does not bother to provide actual proof to back up such a substantial claim. Other than a very subjective opinion: that both players would save a lot of fees in litigation.
Edited 2010-12-06 01:41 UTC
I’m not a lawyer but this is my understanding. The real cost when a business loses a lawsuit is higher than what the court orders the loser to pay. Their good name, confidence of investors, whatever.
But that extra cost has no value to the winning company. Vengeance isn’t value in business. These companies are legally obligated to generate value for their shareholders, not strike down their enemies.
So there is this middle ground in settlement where the winner can get paid more than if they had “won”, and the loser still loses less than if they had “lost”.
Not necessarily, the repercussions go further than the trial itself.
First off the losing party has more to lose than just the trial. Besides the immediate economic hit by the fines. In the case of nvidia it means it losing most of its chipset business (even though they have already lost in that regard) as well as losing other revenue opportunities from the intel PC platform, and for intel that means increased revenue due to reduced competition and from the earnings from the ruling. A similar vice versa scenario can be articulated.
So assuming that not going to court would benefit both companies is not true, since then settlement off court means that one of the players (the one which could have theoretically won the case) has missed a potential opportunity for revenue.
Basically what I wanted to point out is that usually confusing personal opinion with fact lends to arguments which are fallacy.
No
Yeah.
The article is mostly rubbish. It is also the fact that an article on Intel and Nvidia is an article about apple. Frankly this settlement is more general and pretty much affects most notebook makers.
Also there is the claim that the Osx ui can’t work without nvidia graphics (the Arrandale parts rubbish as they are can handle it easily).
apple wants to use OpenCL to accelerate the UI and Intels chips don’t support it, they won’t until Ivy Bridge later in 2011. Nvidia and Apple did most of the work with OpenCL and I can see why apple is keen on working with them.
For those who are not heavy gamers, having nvidia chipset is the optimal solution. Of course, nvidia said it was no longer in chipset business, but IMHO they may change their mind if the agreement with Intel would allow them back to producing chipsets.
Of course, Apple was (and still is) the major user, and, I remember Dell had one model with Nvidia integrated graphics. I hope to see more. It is not clear whether Sandy Bridge will have something substantially better compared with what Intel has now. May be Ivy Bridge will. The fact is nvidia has it now: integrated graphics with a decent performance.
…so are Intel ready to buy nVidia yet then?