Nvidia halts chipset development

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

Full Profile

E-mail

Nvidia, in the midst of legal dispute with Intel, has announced today that any further development of Nforce chipsets are on hold. Intel claims that Nvidia’s license to produce motherboard chipsets supporting Intel processors does not include the Core series of CPUs. Nvidia will pursue the matter in court.

Lead corporate communications spokesman for Nvidia, Robert Sherbin, stated: “Because of Intel’s improper claims to customers and the market that we aren’t licensed to the new DMI bus, and its unfair business tactics, it is effectively impossible for us to market chipsets for future CPUs. So, until we resolve this matter in court next year, we’ll postpone further chipset investments.”

Nvidia has also halted development on chipsets supporting AMD processors. The recently announced Nvidia Fermi architecture appears to be more focused on scientific applications, including a number of features that aren’t of much use to the gaming segment.

This has sparked speculation that Nvidia is pulling out of the mid and high-end discrete GPU market, but Sherbin, brushed off the remarks as “patently untrue.” Sherbin also said that “[Nvidia] will continue to [develop] integrated solutions for Intel’s FSB architecture,” but only pending the outcome of the legal dispute.

Intel has GPU/CPU combination processors on the way in the form of the Clarkdale and Arrandale. They are also developing their own discrete GPU, the Larrabee. AMD/ATI has just released their new Cypress GPU architecture in the form of the HD5870 and HD5850.

Nvidia chipset development halted – comments and views