Nvidia seen cosying up to Intel

REPORTS ARE fresh out of rumourville this morning that Nvidia is planning to 'trade technology' with Intel in return for closer cooperation.

The suggestion is that Nvidia has given away some of its GPU design secrets in exchange for the promise of early access to Intel hardware, support in sales and design wins and the like. Intel is at the top of its game, processor-wise, and Nvidia has to shift to being an Intel-dominated company, on the chipset front, pretty sharpish. It's already started that transition with the nForce 6 series, but it seems there's a desire for more in Satan Clara.

But how closely can Graphzilla and Chipzilla really work together, given that Intel is developing higher-end graphics technology? Jen-Hsun isn't stupid, and he will surely be aware of Intel's ambitions, meaning there is likely some sort of agreement that will maintain Nvidia's high-end market whilst allowing Intel to develop better integrated chipsets.

Of course, this is all speculation, with no confirmed deal in the outing yet. But we've been hearing rumours about cooperation between the two for a while now, with sources confirming to the INQ that Intel already has SLI technology up and running on its own motherboard chipsets. Whilst this isn't quite INVIDIA, it's certainly designed to combat DAAMIT. µ