Intel and NVIDIA make a deal
Intel and NVIDIA have announced a six-year, $1.5 billion dollar technology cross-licensing deal that marks the end of a long patent dispute between the two chipmakers.
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"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-Hsuan. "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."
This is definitely a win for consumers, but especially Mac owners: had Intel and NVIDIA failed to come to an agreement future MacBooks would have been forced to adopt inferior graphics technology — like Intel's integrated solution1 — instead of the current Intel/NVIDIA combo.
- Mac Pros and iMacs have already transitioned away from NVIDIA to AMD (formerly ATI) cards, but it's extremely rare to find an Intel processor coupled with an AMD/ATI graphics card in notebooks so I don't think this something Apple would consider.