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NVIDIA To Exit Chipset Business
The rumor that we discussed a few months back is looking more real. Vigile writes "Once the darling of the enthusiast chipset market, NVIDIA has apparently decided to quit development of future chipsets for all platforms. This 'state of NVIDIA' editorial at PC Perspective first highlighted the fact that the company was backing away from its plans to develop a DMI-based chipset for Intel's Lynnfield processors due to legal pressure from Intel and debates over licensing restrictions. That effectively left NVIDIA out in the cold in terms of high-end chipsets, but even more interesting is the later revelation that NVIDIA has only one remaining chipset product to release, what we know as ION 2, and that it was mainly built for Apple's upcoming products. NVIDIA still plans to sell its current offerings, like MCP61 for AMD platforms and current generation ION for netbooks and nettops, but will focus solely on discrete graphics options after this final release."
I think this is a clever ploy to make Intel play nice with Nvidia. By "letting go" of the market, true or not, Nvidia sends a message that Intel is a monopoly, which puts Intel in a much worse position (remember the EU) than Intel has when competing with Nvidia in the chipset scenario. Obviously, it's impossible to know what's going to happen. But if I were at the top @ Intel, I'd be freaking out a little, for this tiny little company "we have crushed" (that's what Nvidia makes it look like) will get us into the spotlight from regulators. I'm gonna go get some popcorn.