HEXUS.sharewatch: NVIDIA up on rumoured Intel settlement

Back in March 2009 Intel and NVIDIA went to the courts over an Intel claim that NVIDIA doesn't have a license to produce chipsets for the Nehalem - and subsequent - CPU architectures. NVIDIA counter-sued, saying Intel was being anti-competitive, and regulators, which had been a factor in Intel settling its dispute with AMD, soon got involved

Given the precedent set by the AMD settlement, the smart money was always on this case being resolved out of court, with Intel in an awkward position when defending anti-trust allegations, given its track-record. When NVIDIA boss Jen-Hsun Huang revealed (see video below) that the court case intended to resolve this dispute, the smart money was on a settlement.

While it seems likely that Intel will chuck a bit of money NVIDIA's way to prevent any further anti-trust mud being thrown at it, the resulting share gains for NVIDIA probably owe more to the business implications of it being able to build integrated graphics chips for contemporary Intel chips. Even with the latest generation of Intel processors having integrated graphics, there will surely still be a market for giving them a graphics boost.

Elsewhere Microaoft shares had a good week, thanks in part to some pretty impressive sales figures for its new Kinect for Xbox controller-less peripheral. Among the fallers, Google can expect to regain the ground it lost when the Groupon acquisition looked like going ahead, as the deal seems to have fallen through.