In a rather intriguing choice of words, that is

Nov 24, 2009 14:00 GMT  ·  By

Although it finished up some of its bigger legal issues when it settled the antitrust lawsuit with AMD, Intel is still far from getting out of all its other legal disputes. One of the more heated litigations that are taking place between it and NVIDIA, the entire quarrel between the two enterprises revolves around whether the cross-licensing agreement between them allows the GPU manufacturer to produce chipsets compatible with Intel's processors, which have built-in memory controllers.

As an addition to the long list of controversial statements, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said something rather controversial in an interview with T-Break. When asked about the current hostilities between the graphics developer and the Santa Clara enterprise, the former's chief executive officer answered in a rather (bitter) humorous way.

“We just think its funny- its a nice way of letting it out. During the older times, peasants used humor against a tyrannical ruler ship. (Laughs.) It helps ease some of the frustration. But let me ask you- when was the last time you saw a company as big as Intel sue another smaller company? They’re scared and you can write this down- We will kick their ass when we go to court next year.”

Chipsets yield a third of NVIDIA's total revenue and, thus, they are practically central to the company's economy. While Intel wouldn't directly suffer from allowing NVIDIA to see to its own chipsets without any bickering, the giant is probably concerned about other aspects. NVIDIA (and ATI/AMD, for that matter) has begun to expand its business networks by getting new supercomputers to use its GPUs. This means that CPUs, Intel's forte, will no longer be the only devices capable of high-speed data processing. This would directly impact Intel's total sales. Considering these facts, it makes sense that Intel would feel its position threatened, at least enough for it to proclaim war.

Another thing is the company's intention to release its own Larrabee GPU, which probably wouldn't successfully compete against the veterans unless NVIDIA somehow lost the right to manufacture Intel-compatible cards. In this case, hardware manufacturers would be forced to use the Larrabee with all Intel platforms (which would affect NVIDIA's sales, since AMD has ATI as its own graphics business unit).

Of course, this is all circumstantial and based on presumption. There is no way of knowing exactly what Intel wants and why it wants it, although suing NVIDIA does somehow give off a certain feeling of insecurity. All that remains is to see exactly what the court will decide.