Between slagging each other off with cartoons like the one above and taking each other to court over chipset licenses, there's been no love lost between NVIDIA and Intel over the past few years -- but it looks like the war is over. The two companies just 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. Oh, the possibilities of peace.
P.S.- And seriously, what a turnaround for NVIDIA at CES: it's gone from being the company that was going nowhere with Tegra to completely dominating the Android landscape with Tegra 2, finding its way into all sorts of cars, and upending the desktop processor space with Project Denver -- all while pocketing $1.5b of Intel's cash. Not bad work for one Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang.
Update: NVIDIA just said on its press call that it has "no intentions to build chipsets for Intel processors," and that Intel will be able to use NVIDIA's technology in Sandy Bridge, so we suppose that answers that question.
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