by Greg Pfister
Intel and Nvidia reached a legal agreement recently in which they cross-license patents, stop suing each other over chipset interfaces, and oh, yeah, Nvidia gets $1.5B from Intel in five easy payments of $300M each.

This has been covered in many places, like here, here, and here, but in particular Ars Technica originally lead with a headline about a Sandy Bridge (Intel GPU integrated on-chip with CPUs; see my post if you like) using Nvidia GPUs as the graphics engine. Ars has since retracted that (see web page referenced above), replacing the original web page. (The URL still reads “bombshell-look-for-nvidia-gpu-on-intel-processor-die.”)

Since that’s been retracted, maybe I shouldn’t bother bringing it up, but let me be more specific about why this is wrong, based on my reading the actual legal agreement (redacted, meaning a confidential part was deleted). Note: I’m not a lawyer, although I’ve had to wade through lots of legalese over my career; so this is based on an “informed” layman’s reading.

Yes, they have cross-licensed each others’ patents. So if Intel does something in its GPU that is covered by an Nvidia patent, no suits. Likewise, if Nvidia does something covered by Intel patents, no suits. This is the usual intention of cross-licensing deals: Each side has “freedom of action,” meaning they don’t have to worry about inadvertently (or not) stepping on someone else’s intellectual property.

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