Intel Needs Nvidia’s Patents to Fight AMD – Analyst

From X-bit Labs: The settlement between Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. may be near and the two companies may sign another cross-license agreement, according to an analyst with UBS. The world’s largest maker of central processing units (CPUs) apparently needs patents of Nvidia to more efficiently compete against Advanced Micro Devices and ability to offer highly-parallel accelerators for high-performance computing (HPC).

“Given the current regulatory backdrop, we expect Intel to avoid the public scrutiny of a trial that could cloud its access to Nvidia’s graphics and parallel computing patents, and may therefore settle with Nvidia,” said Uche Orji, an analyst with UBS Securities, reports Barron’s web-site.

According to Mr. Orji, Intel wants Nvidia’s patents badly to fight AMD in integrated graphics and parallel processing.

Nvidia believes that it has rights to develop and sell core-logic sets compatible with Intel’s latest-generation Core i microprocessors due to cross-license agreement with the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker of 2004. Intel, nonetheless, believes that the agreement does not cover chipsets for microprocessors with integrated memory controllers. As a result, Nvidia cannot design core-logic for Intel Core i-series chips.

Both AMD’s ATI division as well as Nvidia are developing highly-parallel accelerators for HPC market based on graphics processing units. Intel is also working on such devices and the first commercial product code-named Knights Corner is expected to emerge in 2012.

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