DEBATE - Intel and Nvidia on a major collision course?

THE NEVERENDING Intel vs AMD scuffle continues unabated withcompetition, legal tussles and so on. Right now AMD is knocked down in the CPUboxing match, and recuperating in the corner until their 45nm parts come out,hopefully bringing some hope. They'll need that across the board, fromultramobile to supercomputers.
Another conflict has seemingly been brewing slowly - first fairly silent, nowplain overt. Yeah, Intel and Nvidia surely don't (any more) love each other. Thereasons are quite a few, the newest one being - Larrabee.
Graphics
Up to now, despite the potential Intel-Nvidia acquisition made all butimpossible these days, there was quite a bit of benefit for Nvidia from therecent rapid Intel processor performance advance. The combination of Core 2 Quadand SLI-enabled "speed demon" capability saw Nvidia sell quite a few overpricedhigh end Nforce chipsets to run one, two or more equally overpriced 8800-seriesgraphics cards, thus sharing a big chunk of the "added value" in the Core2-generation desktops, laptops and workstations.
In the meantime, no thanks to Nvidia's (real or perceived) development cycleslowdown, and continued high prices, DAAMIT picked itself up on the GPU side,and, combined with ever-improving Intel chipsets and their Crossfirecapability, managed to get back into biz: a quad-core Intel QX9770 on Intel X48chipset with two Crossfired 3870X2 cards is just as capable, but cheaper than,the same QX9770 on the newest Nforce 790i chipset and twin GeForce 9800GX2 cardsin quad-GPU SLI setup.
The expected accelerated arrival of the RV770 and other next-generationDAAMIT GPUs late this year, will give further headaches to Nvidia which for nowonly has a 55nm G92 shrink coming up soon. Also, ATI's GPU newbies may somehowsee their launch coinciding with the first Gainestown and Bloomfield NehalemCPUs, whose Tylersburg chipset is, guess what, again CrossFire-ready.
The start of next year will, with the arrival of Larrabee, see both Intel andAMD - or whatever it morphs into by then - having the complete CPU, chipsetplatform and GPU stacks across all major market segments: mobile, desktop andGPGPU workstation. Nvidia will, of course, miss the first, by far the mostimportant ingredient - the processors.
However, first Nvidia may be hit there where it hurts most - their flagshipGPU business. The first Larrabees are expected to be far more flexible in theusage models, whether it is a DX10 gaming GPU, an OpenGL workstation engine, ora multifunctional GPGPU.
Couple it with a possible direct QPI connection option on top of the usualPCI-E, and Larrabee may end up as a tightly coupled graphics coprocessor, ableto access all of the Nehalem's large system memory pool very fast, on top of itslocal graphics memory. Better still, having an X86 front end, Larrabee might beprogrammed inline as an X87-style coprocessor - remember those days?
Nvidia, of course, still has a stronghold - but not a stranglehold - amongmany game developers, with the long-perfected relationship over the years. Doesit mean they can impose their model over the Intel one? Not really, those samegame vendors have to increasingly support DAAMIT GPUs too these days, as theHD3870 seems to have the price-performance edge, especially with their newsteppings.
If Intel sees the strategic value of the developer relationship on bothgaming and workstation software front - besides of course getting both DirectXand OpenGL fully optimised - they will open up their fat checkbook as requiredand get that support to the hilt.
Couple this with the ability to - akin to the mainboard chipset business -encourage major vendors to design their truly own unique graphics cards on timefor launch by working with them early in the GPU design stage, compared to NVand ATI making those same vendors stuck with their own board designs, and you get the picture. That added value can translate into far higher margins forthose Taiwanese vendors - which approach will they support, guess?
Chipsets
With the advent of X38 and now X48, Nvidia chipsets have mostly lost theperformance advantage they enjoyed in the Nforce 680i vs Intel 975X days. Thenewest 790i doesn't justify being, say, twice the price of the X48: everythingfrom memory, I/O and graphics capability or overclocking is pretty much equal,with the Intel offering running all that somewhat cooler due to the superiorprocess.
Nvidia was given the Xeon license by Intel to enable creating dual-FSBhigh-end workstation and gaming chipsets which by right should have been thebase of something like Skulltrail. Intel's existing Seaburg 5400 chipset, withthose FB-DIMMs, isn't exactly ideal - a dual-FSB flavour of a Nforce 790i Ultrawould be superb for the purpose. However, for reasons unknown, whether design,available process or a simple cancellation, this never materialised.
With Nehalem's on-die memory controllers, and high-performance Tylersburgchipset, there is far less space for Nvidia to cover - and make extra dosh from- once the new platform arrives this year. And that is, even assuming Nvidiansget the QPI license.
License stand-off
That's where we touch the sensitive spot: the rumours circulate - bear inmind, just rumours - that Nvidia might not get the QPI license after all. Itdidn't deliver on the Xeon side, and its value add is far less in the Nehalemera: so, why give it to them at all?
Well, QPI block would cut Nvidia off ALL future Intel chipset business, and,quite possibly, future high-end tightly-coupled QPI-based GPU market where thisconnection may enable important performance wins.
If Nvidia, as some other rumours say, tried to actively lobby theabovementioned software developers not to support Larrabee, Intel would beunhappy.
What happens when, at the same time, that same Nvidia lobbies support aroundTaiwan for a hostile takeover of AMD due to quadruple market cap advantage - andall that despite US Govt's clear "no" as JenHsun may never pass their securityclearance for AMD Uncle Sam military deals that Hector & Co might be livingoff right now?
And now, with that obviously a goner, Nvidia may be trying the same with VIA- not for their chipsets, for sure, or for the performance of their CPUs, butfor the X86 license, pure and simple. If that deal was to go through, everyoneaside of CPU team may as well look for new jobs.
Faced with this blatant attempt to forcibly build up direct competitionacross the board, Intel might end up sufficiently incensed to give them someserious spanking - a favourite Singapore pastime.
QPI license hold-off is just a start - if the VIA X86 CPU license is anythingsimilar to the AMD one, Intel could attempt to withdraw that one as well.
Now, other newer rumours say that Nvidia is trying to threaten Intel withpossible GPU-related lawsuits to block Larrabee take-off. That by itself may beproblematic since Intel did get quite a hold of graphics patents too, not tomention some nice people from companies like 3DLabs who knew how to do high-end3-D equal, if not better than, NV.
On top of possible Chipzilla IP counter-attack in this case, the Graphzillacould also face Intel's deeper - temporary at least - support for the ATI RV700GPU family as a "complementary" solution to Larrabee. It's only a step furtherfrom the current in-built Crossfire preference, anyway. And, it helps Intel keepits main competitor "afloat" to stave off any monopoly investigations.
However, why not try the "middle path"? After all, if Nvidia doesn't makeunnecessary trouble, Intel could extend them the QPI license - maybe forchipsets only, not for GPUs. It's not as if Nvidians may make full use of it:they just missed essentially dominating the high-end workstation and gamingmarket if they did the above mentioned dual-FSB Xeon Nforce chipset. That mighteven be positive for Nehalem platform-level diversity.
In summary, right now the two Santa Clara-based PC chip giants seem to be ona kind of collision course. In my mind, the collision is not necessary - but thesmaller party has to be more nimble and flexible to avoid getting trampled on,in anger or otherwise.