Uh ? The facts are Intel is refusing to license them to make chipsets for the newer architecture and is in fact suing nVidia to actively prevent it.
Maybe you should drop the nVidia hate a bit and check your "facts".
In this specific market , two chip solutions, even if Nvidia had a license it is pointless. Nvidia wants a license for QPI ( and secondarily for the associated DMI interface... if believe Nvidia they said they already had that).
Having a QPI license is pointless for the mobile Core iX chips since the QPI interface is
inside the the chip package. They can't interface to it. So that lawsuit on Nvidia's part is in part a bunch of 'hot air' because for many of Intel offerings they can't even connect to the bus they are trying to license.
DMI is too slow for graphics traffic. Nvidia would have same limited graphics performance problems that Intel has but for slightly different reasons if tried to leverage that bus. DMI being critical for Nvidia long term business would be that building soutbridge chips was critical for Nvidia. It wasn't and isn't.
Even if Nvidia got a QPI/DMI license pragmatically it really only means they get another round to participate building solutions that compete against the X58 + southbridge chipsets. Even with the license they are still squeezed out of the integrated graphics market. Once you loose control of the memory controller it is largely over in trying to deploy a competitive integrated graphics solution. You will be stuck on the other side of a bus that is extremely likely to have higher latency effects if attempt to constantly stream memory values back and forth over the bus.
So end up with really quirky, hand-wavy, proposed offerings where combine discrete graphics chip with soutbridge ( hanging off DMI and also perhaps PCI-e ) or some monster northbridge/southbridge elements ( a X58-like, high bandwdith PCI-e slots + discrete + southbridge ) . If that is the market Nvidia is trying to sue to join then they really don't get it. There is no long term technological solution there. Once competing to be the
other, more powerful, graphics chip not really going to help much to be saddled with having to throw gobs of transistors at implementing north/southbridge functionality also. That's not going to keep costs or complexity down either.
Additionally, Nvida was never a force in the server chipset market so from Intel perspective it wasn't like they were going to bring much value add contributions that large segment of the QPI bus solution space either. Stripped of graphics was there anything that is standout on the Nvidia chipsets ?
In system solutions where motherboard space is not at a very high premium a discrete solution on a PCIe- card works just fine. Works in the iMac, MBP 15" and many other PC systems. PCI-e is a standard and Nvidia has licenses for it.
There is no suit Nvidia can make to make Intel not move the memory controller to the CPU package. It is not about the bus. Spin doctoring that is about a bus is a distraction and delusion. So Nvidia suing Intel over QPI is about as effective a "noise maker" as it is a technological solution. It solves nothing in the MBA or MBP 13" space.
Part of the FTC settlement with Intel is that they support the PCI-e interface for at least another 6 years. They're not clearly outlining that they would be supporting it partially lead to the dust up with Nvidia:
"the FTC is requiring that Intel accurately represent its roadmap. One of the FTC’s charges was that Intel mispresented its roadmap to NVIDIA which in turn lead to the spat between NVIDIA and Intel over chipsets, buses, and licensing rights, so this would forbid Intel from offering false roadmaps in the future."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3839/intel-settles-with-the-ftc/2
Nvidia suing Intel added fuel to the FTC's case. Nvidia forcing Intel to license something that Intel invented.... there is very little precedence for that ever being successful.
