NVIDIA Corporation and Intel Corporation today announced that the companies have signed a broad, multi-year patent cross-license agreement spanning multiple product lines and product generations. Additionally, the companies signed a multi-year chipset agreement for NVIDIA to license Intel's front-side bus technology.
Although I've been satisfied with recent chipset developments by Intel themselves (they dominate chipset market for its own processors, around 70%), having nForce chipsets available in the platform are very exciting news, especially when you consider SLI and other enthusiast-focused features we usually see in AMD chipsets which will most likely arrive now that the competition has heated once again on Intel's side of things.
NVIDIA plans to have nForce chipsets for Intel processors during the first quarter of next year, sometime between February and April, an NVIDIA spokeswoman said.
In related news, Digitimes is reporting 4th quarter motherboard shipments from Taiwan makers might be affected by a shortage of Intel 865- and 845-series core-logic chipsets, in an effort by Intel to force the industry to migrate to the 915 platform.