Setting aside the antitrust issues... Intel needs nVidia because it (arguably) cannot make a GPU part (the ones it has are slow, Larrabee is a bust). nVidia i

Setting aside the antitrust issues... Intel needs nVidia because it (arguably) cannot make a GPU part (the ones it has are slow, Larrabee is a bust). nVidia is (arguably) less dependent on Intel since it has standalone GPUs as well as low power integrated ARM+GPUs. This makes nVidia well positioned in the low power mobile world, a place where Intel just started to aspire to. In "An Inconvenient Truth: Intel Larrabee story revealed" http://www.brightsideofnews.com/print/2009/10/12/an-inconvenient-truth-intel-larrabee-story-revealed.aspx http://www.brightsideofnews.com/print/2009/10/12/an-inconven... (discussed on HN yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=980927 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=980927), skip down to the section "GPU is dead" and the war with nVidia. In it, the author asserts Intel started a war with nVidia before it had real ammunition (Larrabee) and is in a world of hurt as a result. His speculation is "...on Intel giving an x86 license to nVidia in exchange for cross-license patent, but only time will tell how the situation will develop." If true, that would give nVidia a x86 CPU in addition to their ARM CPU and graphics GPU. Pretty interesting thought.