INTELS PAYS NVIDIA $1.5B AND AGREES TO CROSS-LICENSE DEAL

Intel and NVidia have announced a new six-year cross-licensing deal that will see Intel paying NVIDIA a total of $1.5b over the next five years for access to NVIDIA's technology, while also giving NVIDIA a license to some of Intel's patents. The two companies have also agreed to drop all pending litigation, because you know, they're now friends who just exchanged a billion and half dollars. Crucially, Intel won't give up rights to x86, flash memory or "certain chipsets," so we don't really know if this agreement allows NVIDIA to produce integrated graphics for Sandy Bridge -- although most manufacturers are going with an Optimus-style discrete / integrated switchable arrangement that pairs Intel's on-die graphics with a discrete NVIDIA chip anyway, so we're not so sure it actually matters. We would love to see NVIDIA support Intel's Wireless Display 2.0 and the new Insider 1080p movie service, though -- and if these two coming closer together results in better Intel on-board graphics that can rival AMD Fusion, well, things will get very interesting indeed. [Engadget]