Nvidia Adds Fuel to the Fire by Countersuing Intel

By Geoff Duncan March 27, 2009

Nvidia Adds Fuel to the Fire by Countersuing Intel

Relations between chipmaking giant Intel and graphics developer Nvidia haven’t exactly been smooth for some time, with Nvidia constantly deriding Intel’s integrated graphics solutions and then having the moxy to launch itself into supercomputing applications. Now the tension is reaching new heights: last month, Intel sued Nvidia over a four-year old license deal, claiming that the deal doesn’t apply to Intel’s forthcoming Nehalem processors with integrated memory controllers. Now, Nvidia is ratcheting things up even further, countersuing Intel on the grounds that Intel’s lawsuit against Nvidia constitutes breach of contract by making misleading statements designed to undermine Nvidia’s licensing rights. Nvidia’s suit seeks to terminate Intel’s license to Nvidia patents in graphics processing and 3D technology.

"Nvidia did not initiate this legal dispute," said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, in a statement. "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."

Fundamentally, the suits are asking a court to interpret and rule on the 2004 technology licensing agreement between the two companies. Intel argues the agreement only applies to processors with memory controllers implemented as a separate component from the microprocessor; in order to increase efficiency and performance, future Intel processors will be integrating a memory controller directly into the CPU. Nvidia argues the licensing agreement applies equally to separate and integrated memory controllers, and that Intel has artificially created a licensing dispute as part of a "calculated strategy to eliminate Nvidia as a competitive threat."

Editors' Recommendations

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Everything we know about Lunar Lake, Intel’s big next-generation chips

Lunar Lake CPU die.

You and I might be hotly anticipating what Intel's next-generation Arrow Lake processors will do later this year, but that doesn't mean we can't get excited about what comes after or even alongside it, right? Intel's Lunar Lake is its next, next-generation design, tentatively outlined for a launch maybe before the end of the year. Maybe alongside Arrow Lake on desktop, with Lunar Lake focused on mobile instead.

Curious to see what Intel's been cooking up in the labs? We are, too, and as we get closer to Lunar Lake's debut, we're starting to learn some intriguing details.
Lunar Lake specs
We don't have hard specifications for Lunar Lake just yet, but we do have a few details from Intel and some purported leaks, which paint an interesting picture of what Lunar Lake will be capable of.

Computing

Intel Battlemage graphics cards: release date speculation, price, specs, and more

Intel Arc A770 GPU installed in a test bench.

Despite a rocky start, Intel's Arc GPUs are now among the best graphics cards you can buy. Targeting budget PC gamers, Intel has established itself as a major player in gaming graphics cards, and all eyes are on Team Blue with its next generation of GPUs, codenamed Battlemage.

We know Battlemage GPUs are coming, and Intel has slowly been dropping hints about the graphics cards over the past year. Although we're still waiting on an official release date, specs, and pricing details for Battlemage GPUs, there's a lot we can piece together already.
Intel Battlemage: specs

Computing

Intel’s big bet on efficient GPUs might actually work

An Intel Meteor Lake processor socketed in a motherboard.

Intel has a lot riding on its next-gen Battlemage graphics architecture, and a very early benchmark shows some promising signs for performance. An Intel Lunar Lake CPU packing a low-power integrated Battlemage GPU was reportedly spotted in the SiSoftware benchmark database. It boasts not only higher performance than Intel's Meteor Lake chips, but also much better efficiency.

User @miktdt on X (formerly Twitter) spotted the result, which appears to come from an early qualification sample of the HP Spectre x360 14. The benchmark picked up that the laptop was using a Lunar Lake CPU, which is said to come with the Xe2-LPG architecture, a lower-power version of Battlemage.