Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 Posted by Jim Thacker

Intel signs $1.5 billion licensing deal with Nvidia

Intel and Nvidia have signed a licensing deal that will see the two companies dropping all outstanding legal action against one another, gaining access to one another’s patents (all of Nvidia’s patents in the case of Intel, most of Intel’s patents in the case of Nvidia) – and Intel paying Nvidia $1.5 billion in fees.

In addition to being a huge cash boost for Nvidia, the deal should pave the way for new developments in GPGPU computing. At the Consumer Electronics Show last week, Intel unveiled its new Sandy Bridge chips, which combine CPU and GPU cores on a single die. Not to be outdone, Nvidia announced its plans to move in on the CPU market with its ‘Project Denver‘ range of high-end processors.

Read the official party lines here:

Nvidia’s press release

Intel’s press release

And now some of the more detailed commentaries on the deal:

The Register fills in some of the background context

HotHardware.com draws historical parallels with Intel and AMD

ZDNet UK comments on the implications for GPGPU computing