Nvidia has declared a public relations war against Intel, launching a Web site that accuses the chip maker of stifling innovation.
The site is entitled "The Case for Innovation: FTC, NY State, EU v. Intel," and includes the full court filings against Intel by all the aforementioned entities. It explains some basic terminology (e.g., GPU vs. CPU) and has a page of frequently asked questions about the lawsuits and where NVidia stands on the matter. NVidia's Web site claims that Intel has prevented consumers from having a full range of technologies to chose from, and has stifled future innovation.
Intel is currently defending itself in an antitrust lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission, and last year was found guilty by the European Commission for anti-competitive practices. In the process of that lawsuit, the commission revealed evidence showing manufacturers fear of working with Intel's competitors, including AMD, lest they lose lucrative discounts for doing most of their business with Intel.
When New York Attorney General Andrew Quomo filed a lawsuit against Intel last November, he claimed to have much of the same smoking gun evidence. Intel has said that manufacturer claims of a monopoly come from uninformed low-level employees. The FTC finally got on board with its own lawsuit in December.
Meanwhile, Intel and Nvidia are locked in their own court battle, over whether NVidia has the right to connect to Intel CPUs in a certain family of chipsets called Nehalem.
I'm not sure why NVidia is launching this campaign now. The company's legal battle with Intel isn't supposed to go to trial until August, so it seems a little early to start slinging mud. But it is fun to watch. I wonder how long it'll be before Intel launches its own Web site, claiming that all these lawsuits are bogus and that the company has innovated plenty with the Atom processor and integrated graphics.
