NVIDIA was dealt a major blow when Intel refused to grant the company a licence to use its QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology. Without the ability to make chips for the Nehalem CPUs and with no desire to work with AMD, the company was all but pushed out of the chipset market.
According to a rumour out of Taiwan, though, the GeForce-maker might be preparing to get back into the game, just in time for the launch of Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs. The source suggests that NVIDIA will be combining a southbridge with a GPU to provide motherboard manufacturers an alternative to the upcoming Cougar Point platform.
The company might be able to get away with this because, while it doesn't have a licence to use QPI, the CPU and Platform Controller Hub (PCH) found on Intel's mainstream platforms communicate using the Digital Media Interface (DMI). While we can't be certain, it's fairly safe to assume that NVIDIA has a licence to use this, since it's the same technology that is used with Core 2- and Atom-compatible chipsets.
Apparently this new chip would cost $10-15 less than competing offerings. For mobile platforms, it would also remove the need for an extra discrete GPU.
It's unlikely that Intel would be happy about these developments, but there might not be much that it can do. As a result of investigations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US, the chip-giant is under much tighter restrictions - as well as scrutiny - when it comes to anti-competitive practices.
Given the fact that the graphics-interface has been completely and purposefully removed from the PCH, such a chip would require some clever engineering. The increased data load may also prove to be a lot for the relatively narrow bandwidth provided by the DMI, though DMI 2.0 will increase this to 4GB/s.
We'll be sure to provide more information if and when this story develops.
