Intel and Nvidia sign $1.5billion cross licensing agreement
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A six year, $1.5billion cross licensing agreement has been signed between Intel and Nvidia that could result in close integration of Nvidia gpus with Intel's processors.. The agreement follows a long running patent dispute between the two companies.
Intel will pay the monies in exchange for access to Nvidia's patent portfolio relating to gpus and supercomputers. Nvidia will gain access to part of Intel's patent portfolio, such as patents covering microprocessors and chipsets, though the deal excludes proprietary Intel x86 designs and flash memory.
"The cross licensing agreement allows Intel to integrate Nvidia technologies and those that are covered by our patents into their cpus, such as Sandy Bridge, for example," said Jen-Hsun Huang, pictured, Nvidia's ceo. "And a cross license allows us to build processors and take advantage of Intel patents for the types of processor we're building - Project Denver, Tegra, and the types of processors we're going to build in the future."
The deal settles a patent dispute between the two chipmakers. In February 2009, Intel sued Nvidia to block it from developing compatible chipsets for next generation Intel processors, claiming that a patent licensing agreement between the two companies did not extend to processors with integrated memory functionality.
Nvidia made a countersuit, arguing that Intel had 'manufactured this licensing dispute as part of a calculated strategy to eliminate Nvidia as a competitive threat'. Later that year, it also announced that it was placing development of future hardware on hold until its lawsuits with Intel were resolved.
