Looks more like an out of court settlement similar to Intel's and AMD.
Apparently the update at the end of the article made it clear that they
were talking out of their arse during the conference call. So much drama
over nothing bigger than Intel giving Nvidia 1.5 billion without admitting
guilt for screwing them. Business as usual for Intel. Borrow the best
ideas from the competition, make billions and then settle out of court
years later for a fraction of what they made and cost their competitors in
lost revenue.
Correction: NVIDIA wrote in to tell us that our original headline was not
accurate. An NVIDIA spokesperson said, "Licensing a technology is
different than incorporating an entire processor. The settlement provides
Intel with access to our IP and patents, such as Sandy Bridge which
already uses NVIDIA technology. The license enables Intel to extend that
model for the next 6 years."
Also, I deleted the following text from the article: "On the Intel side,
NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsuan confirmed that Intel could use the licensing
agreement to produce a Sandy Bridge successor with an on-die GPU based on
NVIDIA technology." It looks like NVIDIA's stance is that there's already
NVIDIA IP in the Sandy Bridge IGP, because Sandy Bridge's GPU infringes on
NVIDIA patents. This wrinkle wasn't at all clear from the announcement or
the call—at least, it wasn't clear to me.
On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:55:45 -0600, Brian Weeden <[email protected]>
wrote:
Well how about that - Intel pays Nvidia $1.5 billion, Nvidia licenses its
tech to Intel, which paves the way for Intel to integrate Nvidia graphical
cores into its APUs:
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/01/intelnvidia-bombshell-look-for-nvidia-gpu-on-intel-processor-die.ars
---------
Brian
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