14 DAY TRIAL // The two leading manufacturers of chipsets are currently undergoing a dispute regarding technology licenses for Intel's Nehalem. The Nehalems are Intel's next-generation desktop CPUs, which are due for release at the end of this year. Talks between the two companies seem to have reached a deadlock, as Intel refuses to license NVIDIA to let its chipsets support Nehalems. Apparently, Intel also wants its chipsets to support SLI, which means they need SLI license from NVIDIA.
At the moment, there's no official confirmation coming from NVIDIA, but there is one official statement from Intel confirming the disagreement between the two companies. "There is a disagreement between Intel and Nvidia as to the scope of Nvidia's license from Intel to make chipsets compatible with Intel microprocessors. Intel is trying to resolve the disagreement privately with Nvidia and therefore we will not provide additional details. It is our hope that this dispute will be resolved amicably and that it will not impact other areas of our companies' working relationship," said Dan Snyder, Intel's PR manager.
If NVIDIA loses Nehalem support for its upcoming high-performance chipsets, it will obviously also lose a significant Intel chipset market share. This will also lead to a more fragmented market for high-end desktop graphic cards, compared to more recent years. Until now, NVIDIA has been able to provide users with SLI support for both AMD and Intel processors, being conveniently situated right in between the two chipset manufacturers. However, if the dispute doesn't reach an agreement, we might see high-performance systems based on Nehalem and CrossFire technologies on one end, while on the other we'll have SLI with AMD CPUs.
Or maybe, just maybe, we are going to see NVIDIA release their own CPU and we'll have desktop rigs featuring all NVIDIA technology.