Nvidia chief on Intel lawsuit: I want my day in court

If there were any doubt that Intel and Nvidia aren’t the friendliest of rivals, it became a little more clear today.

During a Q&A session at Nvidia’s analyst meeting today in Santa Clara, Calif., Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang said that he had no inclination to settle an ongoing lawsuit with Intel about whether Nvidia had the right to make chip sets to go with Intel’s newest microprocessors. The allegations in the suit have led to a Federal Trade Commission investigation into whether Intel has used its market power in an anticompetitive way.

“Using unfair practices to lock us out is very unfair,” Huang said. “We are in deep discovery. We are on track to go to trial. I am looking forward to that. I am looking forward to telling our story. I am looking forward to telling all of you.”

Nvidia plans to launch one more chip set in its MCP (media and communications processor) business, and then it will essentially shut it down and shift the resources into other things such as mobile computing chips.

“We are out of that market now,” he said. “MCP has been wound down. We will redeploy in mobile computing. It is really unfortunate. It’s rather unfair. I want my day in court. I want the story to get out. The resolution is going to be quite favorable for us and our shareholders.”

Huang said the legal expenses are “quite significant” and that the company would spend more on legal in the current year than it ever has in its history as a result of the Intel litigation.

Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel, said, “There is nothing to comment on.  He has said this many times before and it’s not new.  We are continuing to prepare for an August trial in this contract dispute in Chancery Court in Delaware.”

Advanced Micro Devices and Intel ended a long-running antitrust feud last year, with Intel paying AMD $1.25 billion. If you ever wondered who the new feuding  Hatfields and McCoys of Silicon Valley are, you have your answer.

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