Intel/NVIDIA license dispute - how could it affect Apple

[darwinian]

So it's clear that Apple has bet big with NVIDIA's 9400M and its discrete graphics cards in all of its recent hardware updates, and presumably this move is in preparation for better OpenCL support in Snow Leopard.

However, if Intel and NVIDIA are not playing nicely on this Core i7 chipset business, what could that mean for the future of their relationship? Does Intel have enough power to say in the future that it doesn't want NVIDIA around any longer? I ask because if that's the case, then Apple might have to rethink its strategy for chipsets and GPUs.

I don't know a lot about this industry level stuff. Anyone who knows more care to chime in?

 

[pdjudd]

However, if Intel and NVIDIA are not playing nicely on this Core i7 chipset business, what could that mean for the future of their relationship?

What evidence do you have that this is the case? The Core i7 is only available in the desktop platform and not a mobile one yet and until Apple updates the Mac Pro or the iMac (which uses mobile components I should point out) what leads you to believe that Apple is not playing nice? Apple cannot even use the Core i7 yet anyway and there has been no indication that they even will do it on anything beyond the Mac Pro which does not even need integrated nvidia gpus. The i7 is still really new.

 

[darwinian]

What evidence do you have that this is the case? The Core i7 is only available in the desktop platform and not a mobile one yet and until Apple updates the Mac Pro or the iMac (which uses mobile components I should point out) what leads you to believe that Apple is not playing nice? Apple cannot even use the Core i7 yet anyway and there has been no indication that they even will do it on anything beyond the Mac Pro which does not even need integrated nvidia gpus. The i7 is still really new.

Articles:
Intel Goes to Court in Licensing Spat With Nvidia (PC World)
Intel takes chipset dispute with Nvidia to court (CNet)
Google News

This conversation is irrespective of desktop v. mobile. I don't know what you mean about 'Apple not playing nice', since that's not what I said. But the larger scope of this is the following:

1) NVIDIA clearly relies on Intel for chips
2) Intel benefits from NVIDIA and it's unclear how much they need them (to me)
3) Apple has been using NVIDIA boards in all of its most recent releases (MB, MBP, with rumors of iMac - yes mobile components, and mini)
4) Could Intel and NVIDIA's relationship be affected so much that they Intel doesn't renew licensing with NVIDIA in the future? If so, this would make Apple's move toward NVIDIA much less appealing for future considerations. In other words, I am wondering if this is all going to end up bigger than Core i7 boards and licensing issues.

 

[pdjudd]

Articles:
Intel Goes to Court in Licensing Spat With Nvidia (PC World)
Intel takes chipset dispute with Nvidia to court (CNet)
Google News

I had not seen either of the articles being that it is still rather new as of this morning, It would have been helpful to have had a link (I am not saying you should have provided one, but it would have been handy) before hand since it totally affected the way I read things.

This conversation is irrespective of desktop v. mobile. I don't know what you mean about 'Apple not playing nice', since that's not what I said.

I misunderstood what you were talking about simply because I had not heard of the dispute that you were referring to. Now that it is being talked about more, I realize I completely mis-interpreted what you were talking about.

All we have right now is just an initial dispute over what appears to be specific licensing, we can't say how this affects anything quite yet in the grand scheme of things since all we have is Intel saying one things and nvidia denying it.

 

[guzhogi]

I just read about that on AppleInsider. Kinda su¢ks since I like Nvidia motherboards, and not really Intel ones. I figure that Nvidia's cannibalizing Intel's motherboard market (especially after Apple switched to Nvidia) so Intel's saying "You're not licensed to do make motherboards for Nehalem." If I had the money, and Nvidia gets to make Nehalem motherboards, I'd really like to build my own gaming computer. Maybe try out EFI-X to see if I can run Mac OS X on it (even though that's against the EULA). If not, at least the rig would be good for gaming.

 

[darwinian]

I had not seen either of the articles being that it is still rather new as of this morning, It would have been helpful to have had a link (I am not saying you should have provided one, but it would have been handy) before hand since it totally affected the way I read things.

I misunderstood what you were talking about simply because I had not heard of the dispute that you were referring to. Now that it is being talked about more, I realize I completely mis-interpreted what you were talking about.

All we have right now is just an initial dispute over what appears to be specific licensing, we can't say how this affects anything quite yet in the grand scheme of things since all we have is Intel saying one things and nvidia denying it.

It's all good -- I'm surprised that there hasn't been more chatter about this. I guess that AI article definitely changed that pretty quickly.

I just read about that on AppleInsider. Kinda su¢ks since I like Nvidia motherboards, and not really Intel ones. I figure that Nvidia's cannibalizing Intel's motherboard market (especially after Apple switched to Nvidia) so Intel's saying "You're not licensed to do make motherboards for Nehalem." If I had the money, and Nvidia gets to make Nehalem motherboards, I'd really like to build my own gaming computer. Maybe try out EFI-X to see if I can run Mac OS X on it (even though that's against the EULA). If not, at least the rig would be good for gaming.

I also like NVIDIA boards. I think benchmarks made clear the benefits of 9400M versus X3100, and it appears that NVIDIA are good at power efficiency considerations, low chip counts, while still doing all the other things (USB, FW, etc. etc.) just fine. Plus having faster memory buses is a good way to get bandwidth balance that affects some of my computationally intensive work, for instance.