Nvidia Halting Nforce Chipset Development
Submitted by: Beren @ 08:05 PM | Thursday, October 8, 2009 | (url: http://www.pcmag....)
Nvidia has announced it will cease development of future Nforce hardware until its suit with Intel is settled sometime in 2010. Intel has alleged that a previous chipset agreement between it and Nvidia does not apply to the Core or Nehalem series of processors.
Category: Hardware | 18 Comments
Tags: intel nforce nvidia
- Comments (18)
Wow. Last time I saw such ballsy moves from a bunch of graphics geeks was when 3dfx made their big go-for-broke move.
Ahem.
Ahem.
someone explain to me what this means
Nvidia only have a chipset agreement with Intel to produce chipsets for the front side bus (FSB) processors (i.e. Penryn), not the new Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) processors (i.e. Nehalem) or the new Direct Memory Interface (DMI) processors (i.e. Lynnfield).
Wow. Last time I saw such ballsy moves from a bunch of graphics geeks was when 3dfx made their big go-for-broke move.
Ahem.
Except nForce isn't their graphics division, it's the mobo chipset. I don't see it being a huge problem since there's still other chipsets out there from ATI/AMD, Intel and others.
You'd think Intel would want to continue/extend the relationship, since it means they get to sell more CPUs.
Not a very smart move on their part. Seems like nVidia picked the right response.
Not a very smart move on their part. Seems like nVidia picked the right response.
I don't think it will hinder their processor sales. There are other chipsets that motherboard manufacturers can choose from. Even ones straight from Intel themselves.
Except nForce isn't their graphics division, it's the mobo chipset. I don't see it being a huge problem since there's still other chipsets out there from ATI/AMD, Intel and others.
Article also asserted that they are putting more emphasis on scientific computing, at the expense of consumer graphics. It's a shift in focus from graphics-only to graphics + general number crunching, which puts them squarely in competition with Intel and AMD, their former partners.
That's the ballsy (and risky) part. That could also help explain motivation for lawsuit from their former buddies.
Also note that it appears they don't have much choice, both Intel and AMD are pursuing tightly integrated graphics + CPUs, so Nvidia has to pony up or be left behind.
Should be interesting, indeed.