NVidia Bails Out Of Chipset Business

In a surprise move, NVidia has decided to get out of the chipset business. Rumors have it that manufacturers have already canceled orders for the upcoming nForce 7 series of chips. In an article from Digitimes Mobos it states:

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 lukewarm 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.

Which makes one wonder. Is this decision in response to the recent problems that both Dell and HP are facing with NVidia chips overheating? In the case of the Dell units, Dell has issued a BIOS update to increase the time that the cooling fans stay on to keep the chip cool.

It is possible that Dell & HP may have to replace the chips as more fail and NVidia would need to absorb some the replacement costs.

Source.

Oops. Now ExtremeTech says the story is false.

“The story on Digitimes is completely groundless. We have no intention of getting out of the chipset business,” said Bryan Del Rizzo, a company representative, in a statement. (The same statement was later resent as an official company statement.)