Intel Files Lawsuit Against Nvidia

[YukonTrooper]

Jen-Hsun is desperate.

[Zucker2k]

Meh, I dont know what's in the contract, but as long as there's nothing stated about memory controllers integrated or external regarding CPU's, I dont think Intel has much to stand on.

Although Ive read several complaints about nVidia chipsets for the Intel platform, they're damn good on AMD platform. I dont know where the issue is on the Intel platform, but if they somehow get that right (for example no need for a memory controller), they would have to offer something good over X58 since that does offer SLI and CFX now. So for example good ref. clocking, improved mGPU performance, hybrid SLI solutions etc.

Hard thing to make nForce worth it over X58, but if they get it working they've quite a huge market. At least eVGA, XFX etc wouldnt think twice to release pure nForce boards, maybe even drop X58 boards. However, if they dont get it working, which is likely since all those things are simply hard to to accomplish, I wouldnt even bother. Or maybe if they would be able to release the same features for 100$ less

But regarding this whole thing... whatever. There's always something to crap about between them. nVidia made ups, but so did Intel. Im still convinced they would have sold less X58's if there was no SLI support since I sense a stronger nVidia preferance over any CPU preferance, could be me though.

It is definitely you; what percentage of the market cares for SLI? 0.0001?

Edit: Most are missing the point here; this is no longer about SLI; that is old tech as far as Intel is concerned. The future is netbooks and mainstream desktop offerings with imc. More than anything else, Intel's atom is set to dominanate the netbook market and Nvidia knows this and have become desperate. Of course Intel could reap all the loot or "invite" Nvidia to have a share, your guess is as good as mine what path Intel is choosing. For Intel the way out is that they're arguing a platform or bundle instead of selling the cpus as a unit. What this means is that each atom cpu is sold bundled with a chipset. This effectively locks everybody to the platform since none have a license from Intel to pair the cpus with another chipset. In effect; Intel sells cpu, chipset, igp, etc. A whole load of cash. It's a brilliant move. Ironically, Nvidia is right, the cpu is dead, it's replaced by the platform.

[ToTTenTranz]

With the AMD\ATi merger you'd think that Intel and nVidia would be closer together, not trading blows

And they would.. if Intel wasn't planning on fighting nVidia head-on in the future, with Larrabee.

Intel plans things with a lot of anticipation. Remember when they sold the ARM-based XScale CPUs to Marvell back in 2006? That's because they planned that 3 years later they would have to fight ARM CPUs with their own low-power x86.


For Intel, nVidia is no longer a pleasant symbiot, it's a dreadful parasite.

[GAR]

Intel fears nvidia, thats all. After all, a GPU is way more advanced piece of hardware than a cpu is.

[CmB]

Intel fears nvidia, thats all. After all, a GPU is way more advanced piece of hardware than a cpu is.

Interesting point of view. Would you mind elaborating? After all, the prevailing opinion seems to be that nvidia should fear Intel. No sarcasm in this post, just a question.

[Shintai]

Intel fears nvidia, thats all. After all, a GPU is way more advanced piece of hardware than a cpu is.

No..the GPU is multifold more simple than a CPU. Its like comparing a toy car with a real car. GPUs are simple in construction and contains alot of "copy/paste" logic. It takes about 4-5 years to develop a CPU with 1000s of people. A GPU is usually made in 1-1½ years with 100s of people. The record for a GPU is about 3 years I think. With completely new architecture. G80 costed about 475mio$ to develop according to nVidia. K10, K8, Core 2, i7 etc is multi billion$ research pieces.

[ToTTenTranz]

Intel fears nvidia, thats all. After all, a GPU is way more advanced piece of hardware than a cpu is.

Honestly, if you're not ever going to have an opinion on your own, you may as well just quote your god Jen-Hsun Huang with bold characters and be done with it.

[FischOderAal]

Maybe he forgot to make [irony]-tags?

[zanzabar]

With the AMD\ATi merger you'd think that Intel and nVidia would be closer together, not trading blows

thats what NV wanted but NV screwd intel with the crap that they put out and it was an embarrassment for intel. and any1 saying that NV makes good chipsets on amd, they always made the lowest tier, u had via/s3 and amd/ati above them in every generation of socketA, 754, and 939 then in am2 NV payed amd to not relies a chipset affter the ati merger and look what that gave them.

and for the 16x 3 way, why would u even want that using a routing chip and only having 36 usable lanes like the x38/48 and just wiring them electrically 16x wastes space on the pcb and makes things do more than they need for a little more synthetic bandwidth but more latency, and if u want to go like that u can get an asus board with x48 and 64 lanes with duel plx chips, with routing u can make as amny pipes as u want but u cant use more bandwidth than the IO so its pointless

[ToTTenTranz]

thats what NV wanted but NV screwd intel with the crap that they put out and it was an embarrassment for intel.

Big decisions in big companies like Intel, nVidia and AMD are never made with revenge in mind.


We all joke and comment about the "can of whoop ass" episode, but don't think even for a second that Intel's decisions have ever had anything to do with that. There's too much at stake, so people who make the decisions are all "grown-ups". Revenge, pride, justice and other terms only exist in the PR department.

When Jen-Hsun Huang made that statement, the only thing he accomplished was to reduce himself to an idiot among neutral observers (and to a "cool guy" among his fanboys).

[perkam]

Nvidia is quickly becoming the underdog in this industry with AMD and Intel both wanting a common platform for their CPU and Motherboard product lines.

ATI was right when it told Nvidia that the writing is on the wall back when it was acquired by AMD....................BUT........................ ..

Nvidia is smarter than most companies and even in times of desperation, it can decide to sell off non-essential components of its business to stay profitable, if it comes to that.

Perkam

[ownage]

No..the GPU is multifold more simple than a CPU. Its like comparing a toy car with a real car. GPUs are simple in construction and contains alot of "copy/paste" logic. It takes about 4-5 years to develop a CPU with 1000s of people. A GPU is usually made in 1-1½ years with 100s of people. The record for a GPU is about 3 years I think. With completely new architecture. G80 costed about 475mio$ to develop according to nVidia. K10, K8, Core 2, i7 etc is multi billion$ research pieces.

I think its more then 3 years. G80 started back in 2001 (but with some breaks).
RV770 was started in 2005. R600 in 2002 if my memory doesn't play tricks with me.
But indeed with lot less people to develop.

[zanzabar]

intel wants to hold their market share (thats the point of the biz model for a duopoly) and keep oems happy with low rma costs, if they let some1 make an inferior product that courses problems then they wont give them a new license. so if some1 lowers your cpu sales then u cut them off so u can protect your core market

[ToTTenTranz]

Nvidia is smarter than most companies and even in times of desperation, it can decide to sell off non-essential components of its business to stay profitable, if it comes to that.

Perkam

And what would they sell and to whom?

Although they do have the best platform for low-power x86 IMO, their chipset business is about to die.

All the GPU computing stuff is directly related to their GPU hardware, so they cannot sell it without selling their GPUs business (which is what? 85% of current nVidia personnel?).

The only thing they can sell is Tegra and Goforce, but that's really their last way out to remain profitable when they loose all the low-end GPU business to AMD and Intel IGPs.

[rozzyroz]

nvidia is in a bad spot right now... unles they offer a product that is lightyears ahead of either intel or amd's graphics solutions, they will fade away from the industry.

nvidia is crying foul or whatever, but the truth of the matter is that when amd bought ati, the future of the industry was taken to a new direction. the platform direction that amd/ati were talking about when the joned together will be how buisiness will be done in the future.

amd already has their platform thing going on, but its a matter of time before larabee comes to market and intel is in the same boat. if nvidia had any insight, they would consider joining intel, or face fading away from the industry.

[crash5s]

Big decisions in big companies like Intel, nVidia and AMD are never made with revenge in mind.


We all joke and comment about the "can of whoop ass" episode, but don't think even for a second that Intel's decisions have ever had anything to do with that. There's too much at stake, so people who make the decisions are all "grown-ups". Revenge, pride, justice and other terms only exist in the PR department.

When Jen-Hsun Huang made that statement, the only thing he accomplished was to reduce himself to an idiot among neutral observers (and to a "cool guy" among his fanboys).

I don't think that intel is out for revenge, but Huang certainly did make a jackass out of himself and has been goading intel with a stick.

Really though though only reason for an nvidia chipset was SLI. I'd feel better for nvidia if they could make a working chipset, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

[ToTTenTranz]

if nvidia had any insight, they would consider joining intel, or face fading away from the industry.

Or merging with VIA.
With the emergence of netbooks and increased importance of low-power CPUs, I do see VIA as a potential major player in this future CPU+platform market.
The Nano CPU is excellent for netbooks and, paired with Ion, it would blow away every Atom platform we've seen in Intel roadmaps so far.

And I still don't really get why nVidia and VIA broke up their "marriage" a while ago. Maybe VIA got confident of their S3 GPUs, or nVidia thought that pairing with Atom would get them a lot more OEM design wins.

[crash5s]

Or merging with VIA.
With the emergence of netbooks and increased importance of low-power CPUs, I do see VIA as a potential major player in this future CPU+platform market.
The Nano CPU is excellent for netbooks and, paired with Ion, it would blow away every Atom platform we've seen in Intel roadmaps so far.

And I still don't really get why nVidia and VIA broke up their "marriage" a while ago. Maybe VIA got confident of their S3 GPUs, or nVidia thought that pairing with Atom would get them a lot more OEM design wins.

Do we know that chipset isn't bugged though? I mean after 680i, 790i, g92's failing, laptop problems, ect, do you really think that Ion won't be plagued with problems?

nvidia seems to be imploding lately. The can of whoop-ass moment just made it more funny then tragic.

[ToTTenTranz]

Do we know that chipset isn't bugged though? I mean after 680i, 790i, g92's failing, laptop problems, ect, do you really think that Ion won't be plagued with problems?

nvidia seems to be imploding lately. The can of whoop-ass moment just made it more funny then tragic.

We know the chipset isn't bugged because it's being used in millions of Macbooks and Macbook Pros, with no known major problems. Their low-cost Geforce 8200 chipset didn't have any problems either AFAIK.

[ownage]

Good or bad chipsets, either way it doesn't say much nVidia sells allot (or not) or has a healthy future in the 'chipset' market.

[zanzabar]

We know the chipset isn't bugged because it's being used in millions of Macbooks and Macbook Pros, with no known major problems. Their low-cost Geforce 8200 chipset didn't have any problems either AFAIK.

u apparently havnt a laptop fail on u for no apparent reason and rma 6 times with HP from an NV IGP

and apple is replacing the mac book with amd gpu and intel chipsets in q3, when the NV contract expires. they are only using it now becouse they have to

and ive already seen 3 dead mac books with the new NV chipset so go figure

[zsamz_]

u apparently havnt one fail on u for no apparent reason and rma 6 times with HP from an NV IGP

and apple is replacing the mac book with amd gpu and intel chipsets in q3, when the NV contract expires. they are only using it now becouse they have to

and ive already seen 3 dead mac books with the new NV chipset so go figure

i had a fever today n i almost bought a 790i
came back to earth after i remembered my 680i board it died n took my sticks with it

[alpha0ne]

Jen-Hsun is desperate.

Desperate to keep his job more likely

Nv only need a new CEO/director with a little more maturity to solve most of their current problems though in the long term Nv deciding to enter the chipset business could be their undoing

[Donnie27]

SLI or Crossfire is still a tiny minority of the market really, single card dual gpu solutions offer the same functionality without needling a fancy mb.

So in that regard its not like nvidia would be loosing allot of sales considering single gpu's are the vast majority anyways.

EDIT: But nvidia shoots itself in the foot for not making SLI more accessible like Crossfire. Still not many will go dual gpu but just having the option there for more people means theres a good chance more people might try it out just because the ability to do it is already in place.

Tiny yes, but you're still talking about a few million boards. Not exactly Chump Change when DIY market are expected to be small vs the overall market. nVidia's problem is they are full of yes men and no one has the ballz to tell the Boss when to step back and not be so aggressive.

Yet folks talk about Steve Jobs having a big ego

Yes guys I've been following the ION and Atom arguments.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/...ntel_Atom.html

According to media reports, Intel sells its Atom processors bundled with supporting chipsets, hence, the market of supporting third-party core-logic is absent these days. Additionally, it is unclear whether Nvidia has legal rights to produce and sell Intel Atom-compatible chipsets.

Much larger market than some stupid SLI. Greed on SLI blinded nVidia and they couldn't see where the real profits would be.

The Nvidia Ion platform combines the GeForce 9400 mGPU with the Intel Atom CPU. That combination would be only possible if Intel started selling Atom processors without the Intel chipset (945GSE and 945GC). However, Intel replied to hardware makers that this wouldn't happen, at least anytime near soon. DigiTimes got an Intel comment that "...We have no plans to validate the Nvidia MCP79 chipset on Atom-based nettop or netbook platforms. Intel also has no plans to form a partnership with Nvidia to support nettop or netbook platforms based on the Intel Atom CPU,...". Nvidia is expected to respond soon, even there are many people who believe that such platform would be seen at the market...Only time will tell if Nvidia will partner with Intel.

[Greg83]

i had a fever today n i almost bought a 790i
came back to earth after i remembered my 680i board it died n took my sticks with it

, if nothing else. I hope this results in never having to worry about being tricked by the another 680i.

If I were intel and had purchased a 680i board, to have it kill my ram(s) and then die itself to have to rma and repeat 10 times.
I too would be sueing nvidia for any future attempts at making a motherboard that uses my cpu in it.