Intel will have continued access to Nvidia’s full range of patents.
About a week ago when SB reviews started to appear, I stated that NV needed to start licensing their GPU technology to Intel because they were eventually going to get squeezed out of the marketplace otherwise. Unless I am mistaken, this agreement might be heading in that direction. NV is still constrained from selling chipsets for some architectures (X58? P67? H67?)... and even if they weren't, their chipset development team has been dissolved. So now they can make discrete GPUs and SoCs. Most of the market for GPUs is in IGPs (and now APUs / SB), and NV have
zero opportunity there with the current Intel and AMD architectures. The discrete GPU market is shrinking as low-end performance advances (look at what happened to the mainframe vs. workstation markets; same thing). NV knows this, and is trying to find a lifeboat for their admittedtly-good design team. I would not be surprised if Intel becomes - or even, already
is - that lifeboat.
Otellini: NV, how much $ would you need to redesign your Fermi 560 chip to be produced on our 32 nm fab process?
Huang: Geez! Like, about a
billion dollars!
Otellini: OK. Here's a billion and a half. Get started, and send us the lithography when you're done.
Before you're done. We have this annoying, pesky fly *cough* AMD *cough* that we can't seem to kill off, and it's destroying our ability to make outrageous profits. But with you on our team, we are unstoppable.
And if you don't like my offer, I'd be happy to show you the alternative...