Intel Agrees to Five-Year $1.5B Licensing Deal with NVIDIA

Intel and NVIDIA have passed legal shots at each other for the past couple of years, but it appears that the current legal disputes are over, and we can all stop hearing about them. In a cross-licensing agreement, Intel has agreed to pay NVIDIA a total of $1.5 billion over the course of five years and across five payments, with the first beginning on January 18th of this month.

As a result of this detail, all legal disputes have been dropped between the companies, which I’m sure is a relief to both of them. As NVIDIA’s President and CEO stated, “This agreement signals a new era for NVIDIA“, as it “reflects” the fact that Intel sees value in its technologies and inventions, especially with regards to its presence in the mobile realm.

In this agreement, Intel will have access to NVIDIA’s range of patents, while NVIDIA in addition to having its pockets padded will retain the ability to use some of Intel’s patents. The release states that this deal excludes processors, which means that NVIDIA hasn’t gained access to x86, and also that it doesn’t gain access to “certain chipsets” for the Intel platform – which suggests that it does now have support for some of them.

The result of this agreement should be interesting, and if NVIDIA does get back into the chipset game, I doubt many an enthusiast would complain. NVIDIA never produced horrible chipsets, so I say bring it on!

“This agreement signals a new era for NVIDIA,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA’s president and chief executive officer. “Our cross license with Intel reflects the substantial value of our visual and parallel computing technologies. It also underscores the importance of our inventions to the future of personal computing, as well as the expanding markets for mobile and cloud computing.”