Nvidia to quit chipset business
Ricky Morris, DIGITIMES, Taipei [Friday 1 August 2008]
Nvidia has decided to throw in the towel and quit the chipset business, sources close to
the situ
ation at one of Taiwan's top motherboard makers have revealed. As the story is told, Nvidia called a meeting earlier t
his week with its motherboard partners to gauge support for it continuing to develop chipsets in the future.
The motherboard makers' response? Silence.
It is still early days and not all the facts are known at the time of writing, but it is believed Nvidia will transfer the chipset team to working on GPU projects. On the motherboard makers' side, some makers have already canceled upcoming high-end motherboard projects based on the nForce 7-series chipset.
The loss of its chipset business is expected to have a significant impact on Nvidia's GPU business in the short-term. Reception to the nForce 200 chip (BR04) which will enable
SLI technology on Intel X58 motherboards has been luke
warm at best, with many makers saying they will not bother adding the chip on their boards. This means Nvidia needs to find a way of licensing and enabling multi-GPU support on motherboards using
Intel and/or AMD chipsets fast. Otherwise it will have to cede the top-end of the graphics
card market to
AMD, which now has the benefit of Crossfire.
The news would also debunk any recent speculation that Apple will be adopting Nvidia chipsets for its upcoming notebook products. It would be unfortunate if Apple really has poured water on the close relationship it has built with Intel over the past few years, only to have its new best friend exit the market before products are even announced.
Categories: Mobo, chipset
http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20080801VL203.html
