Intel And Nvidia Reach Agreement Over Dispute

Nvidia has signed a new six-year long cross- licensing accord with Intel, ‎which entails Intel to pay the graphics chipmaker $1.5 billion in ‎licensing fees ending the legal dispute between them over Nvidia’s ‎right to attach their graphics processors to Intel’s most modern chips.

‎The dynamics of the environment are fast changing for Intel and for ‎the computing industry as power efficiency and battery life are ‎affecting performance and entertainment has a say over productivity. ‎Intel is losing the advantage of having their x86 architecture being the ‎platform of choice for software vendors. ‎

Intel filed a case in 2009 restricting Nvidia access to Intel’s x86 and ‎prevented Nvidia from integrating their latest GPUs used in mobile ‎devices with higher-end Intel chips, except the low end Atom chips. ‎But over time Intel’s x86 architecture had lost ground as against the ‎GPUs in the high- end performance sector along with ARM-based chips ‎used in the mobile sector. Intel became a loser in comparison with ‎ARM-based platforms like those used in Qualcomm and Nvidia. ‎

As per the new accord, Intel can continue to access NVIDIA’s full ‎range of patents. In return, NVIDIA would receive an aggregate of $1.5 ‎billion in licensing fees, in annual installments, and retain use of Intel’s ‎patents, as per the existing six-year agreement with Intel, prevailing ‎upto March 31, 2011.‎