Intel sues Nvidia over chipset licences

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 19 Feb 2009 at 08:47

Intel has filed suit against Nvidia, alleging the graphics-card manufacturer does not have a licence to build motherboard chipsets for its Core i7 processors.

The lawsuit, filed with the Court of Chancery in the state of Delaware, specifically claims the four-year-old licensing agreement between the companies does not apply to processors with integrated memory controllers, such as the Core i7.

"Intel has been in discussions with Nvidia for more than a year attempting to resolve the matter but unfortunately we were unsuccessful," the company claims in the filing. "As a result Intel is asking the court to resolve this dispute."

The lawsuit represents a final flare up in the cold war that has been raging between these two companies for the last couple of years. Intel's increased focus on the graphics market has rankled Nvidia, which infamously described Intel's Larrabee platform as "laughabee".

Nvidia's mood was similarly defiant when addressing the lawsuit: "We are confident that our licence, as negotiated, applies," says Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. "At the heart of this issue is that the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the GPU. This is clearly an attempt to stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business."

This is not the first time Intel has reacted to its competition by filing lawsuits. VIA famously took a stand against Intel ten years ago, when Intel decided the Pentium 4 bus was a proprietary technology that companies needed a licence to use on their motherboards.

VIA claimed it could bypass the technology, refused the licence conditions and ended up watching its once highly-successful motherboard business fold in 2008.