Intel To Pay NVIDIA Licensing Fees of $1.5 Billion

wiredmikey writes "NVIDIA and Intel have agreed to drop all outstanding legal disputes between them and Intel will pay NVIDIA an aggregate of $1.5 billion in licensing fees payable in five annual installments, beginning Jan. 18, 2011. Under the new agreement, Intel will have continued access to NVIDIA's full range of patents."

Comments

Wonder if Intel..

[RightSaidFred99]

Wonder if Intel will be able to use any of NVidia's patents to bolster their GPUs, which is really their only sore spot at the moment (Atom vs. ARM might be a sore spot, but there's hope there).

Re:Wonder if Intel..

[icebike]

I note that AMD CEO Meyer resigned.

Perhaps this agreement was the writing on the wall for him?

Re:Wonder if Intel..

[alvinrod]

It could be coincidence, or it could be incredibly telling.

The best thing AMD had going was that Intel's onboard GPU's sucked. AMD has a new chip architecture coming out in the next few months and no one really knows how well it performs, except AMD. It was pretty much a given that they would have a better integrated GPU since they have ATI building it, but the CPU portion of the chip is still an unknown.

We'll assume that for the sake of argument that AMD knows that on the CPU side they'll be weaker, but that on the GPU side they'd be stronger. If Intel can grab as many of nVidia's goodies as they'd like, the GPU side of the equation will probably cancel out, leaving AMD without a pot to piss in.

Or, it could just be coincidence.

Re:Wonder if Intel..

[cheater512]

Although AMD is cheaper, and when you are squabbling about a minor speed decrease, over 4 cores to read your email, its pretty irrelevant.
Might be relevant for work horse scenarios but nothing else.

Re:Wonder if Intel..

[Rockoon]

They're not cheaper because they want to be, they're cheaper because they have to be. They can't compete on performance

Intel is more expensive because they have to be. They can't compete on value.

See what I did there?

The only metric worth anything is performance per dollar. You have not used that metric but tried to draw a conclusion as if you did.

Before you reply in fanboy rage, lets try it with cars:

Ford is not cheaper (than Ferari) because they want to be, they're cheaper because they have to be. They can't compete on performance, so they try to do it on price.

With cars your bullshit logic has no teeth. Now why the fuck would it apply to processors but not cars?

Intel has a very large range of processor models at a very large range of price points. Yet they don't top the charts with whats on the market today.

Intel charges more because it has brand recognition which was propped up with the illegal activities of this convicted monopolist.

Very Interesting Vis-a-vis AMD/ATI Aquisition

[divide overflow]

I can't help but wonder if this was primarily a fig leaf for Intel's licensing/acquisition of NVIDIA's GPU technology with which to compete with AMD and its acquisition and incorporation of ATI's graphics products within its own silicon. This may have advantages over the alternative of Intel making an offer to purchase all of NVIDIA.

No x86 or Chipset.

[rahvin112]

Look like nvidia finally gave up on getting the x86 or chipset license. Guess the CEO is now going to bet the farm on ARM and Linux and think they can pull it off with closed source drivers! Either that or ARM windows which in my opinion will be DOA. Those patents where nVidia's best hope for an x86 license, Intel appears to have bargained with the bottom line being no x86.

Re:No x86 or Chipset.

[Junta]

ARM windows which in my opinion will be DOA

But look at all the success they have had with the Windows editions for MIPS, Alpha, Itanium, and Power! (No, I don't count the kernel on xBox 360 in the same realm here).

Re:nVidia needs to die in a fire

[Locke2005]

Both ATI and nVidia suck. But it is far better to have the two of them competing with each other to at least pretend to be meeting their customers needs than to have one of them fail leaving us with only a single source for graphics chipsets. Would you really like to see AMD/ATI become the single video card vendor, complete with an AT&T "fuck you, we don't have to care, where else are you going to go?" attitude?

Re:Still no x86 license.

[TheRaven64]

There's no such thing as an 'x86 patent'. There are, however, parts of the x86 architecture that are difficult to implement without using certain patented techniques. Most of these come from the later generations and new ones are added with each new release by AMD or Intel. Both have a cross-licensing agreement, so they can use each others' patents, but new entrants into the market have a problem. Cyrix worked around this by having IBM (which also has a cross-licensing deal with Intel) fab their chips.

Re:nVidia needs to die in a fire

[Korin43]

What's wrong with nVidia? They don't provide open source drivers, but they do provide the *best* drivers for Linux. While I'd rather have good and open source drivers, good is a higher priority to me. I guess ATI has been getting better, but I've never had bad experiences with nVidia drivers.

And it's worth noting that they don't provide open source Windows drivers either and likely never will. Complaining because they don't do more for Linux users than they do for Windows users seems strange to me.

Re:nVidia needs to die in a fire

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

get this: even if windows is better for some stuff, die hard zealots will stick to linux, it's about being open/free source.

ATI contributes code in the open, even if it sucks, it's preferable (for the die hards) than the better working but proprietary nVidia code.

Re:Still no x86 license.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I can only imagine that NVIDIA has concluded that, without any fab abilities of their own, playing #3 in the x86 market would be a cruel, low-margin game(assuming they even managed to make a profit at it). You already have Intel, whose GPUs are anemic; but who has the best core designs and superb in-house fabs. Then you have AMD, whose cores and (formerly in house) fab capabilities lag those of Intel; but whose GPUs are approximately equal, on average, with NVIDIA's, and whose CPUs kick the hell out of Via's.

There just isn't a pleasant niche to be had there: among customers who don't care about GPU performance, intel can afford to practically give away their low end x86s, because of superior fab prowess. Among customers who do care about GPU performance, AMD has ATI GPUs of varying power coupled with CPUs that don't suck.

look what's left of DEC-Alpha employees...

[garyisabusyguy]

after Compaq sold the rights to Intel

You want to assume that some of them are still working Alpha goodness into Intel products, but it is just as likely that they killed the tech and kept their talent out of the light of day

Re:nVidia needs to die in a fire

[Yosho]

Get this: Linux users are a minority, and die-hard zealots are a minority in that minority.

Most of the people who buy video cards do so either for high-end industrial work or gaming, and the vast majority of those people use Windows and do not care whether their drivers are open source or not.

In related news... AMD CEO resigns!

[IYagami]

See http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-appts-seifert-2011jan10.aspx

Some very interesting analysis can be found at:
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/1/10/coup-at-amd-dirk-meyer-pushed-out.aspx
"Remember, Dirk Meyer’s three deadly sins were:

1) Failure to Execute: K8/Hammer/AMD64 was 18 months late, Barcelona was deliberately delayed by 9 months, original Bulldozer was scrapped and is running 22 months late -I personally think this is not true; Dirk Meyer was AMD's CEO from July 18, 2008 until January 10, 2011; he could not be responsible for K8 nor Barcelona, however Bulldozer...-
2) Giving the netbook market to Intel [AMD created the first netbook as a part of OLPC project] and long delays of Barcelona and Bulldozer architectures -this is interesting, after Intel has a serious failure with the Pentium 4, it's mobile division is the one who changes everything with Intel Core 2, designed from a mobile perspective-.
3) Completely missing the perspective on handheld space - selling Imageon to Qualcomm, Xilleon to BroadCom -I think this is the key; no one expected this market to be as successful as it is at the moment-"

Re:nVidia needs to die in a fire

[crafoo]

NVidia Linux drivers work and they're fast. I've yet to see anything comparable from the open source ATI side of things. NVidia also seems to do OpenGL a whole lot better than ATI/AMD in either Windows or Linux. It's strange that you would berate them. I think maybe the OS crowd should try emulating their success rather than slinging mud. And hey, if you really want to sling it around, why not write drivers that beat out NVidia's stuff? Maybe someone would take you seriously then.