NVIDIA responds to Intel's suit with another suit.
Last month, Intel decided it was time to sever all ties with the loudly CPU-hating NVIDIA. It filed a suit against the graphics accelerator and chipset designer to make official what it believes is already the case – that a technology cross-licensing agreement between the companies is over.
This agreement allows the two to keep their chips compatible, but Intel claimed this no longer applied to its newer processor lines, such as the Nehalem, due to the addition of an onboard memory controller. NVIDIA, who previously designed and created the memory controllers, was adamant that nothing had changed. “We are confident that our license, as negotiated, applies,” said NVIDIA’s president, Jen-Hsun Huang. “This is clearly an attempt to stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business.”
Today, NVIDIA has made that feeling official, filing a counterclaim against Intel for “breach of contract.” It also aims to mirror Intel’s goal on its own side, terminating Intel’s license to access NVIDIA’s patent portfolio. Chances are high, however, that this won’t at all bother Intel, particularly considering it’s now working on its own powerful discrete graphics chip, Larrabee.
The theme for today is ‘they started it.’ “NVIDIA did not initiate this legal dispute,” says Huang. “But we must defend ourselves and the rights we negotiated for when we provided Intel access to our valuable patents. Intel’s actions are intended to block us from making use of the very license rights that they agreed to provide.”
NVIDIA claims it has been “attempting for more than a year to resolve the disagreement with Intel in a fair and reasonable manner.” The two have never really gotten on all that famously, but now the shit has definitely hit the fan. All we can do is hopelessly watch and see where it lands.
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