No, nVidia is NOT exiting the chipset market

nVidia has denied reports that it will soon be exiting the motherboard chipset market. The story first ran last Friday in the Taiwanese tech publication DigiTimes, citing unnamed sources at motherboard makers.

The story just didn’t make sense when I first read it. Why in the world would a market leader – nVidia claims more than 60 percent of the AMD market and a decent chunk of Intel as well – want to bail on a thriving business? Well, Nehalem might be a good reason. With the memory controller going on the CPU and the frontside bus going away, chipsets will no longer be needed.

But why quit now? Nehalem isn’t due until December and even then, it will take it years to fully consume the market.

Well, they’re not quitting. nVidia’s top spokesman Derek Perez issued a flat denial to InternetNews.com, calling the article “groundless” and saying “We have no intention of getting out of the chipset business.”

Once again I find myself following up on a story that was irresponsible and lazy (Dell dropping AMD, anyone?). I like DigiTimes and have gotten some nice leads from them. Given they are in Taiwan, the heart of the Asian component sector, they have a lot of connections.

But this was truly irresponsible, to run a story (I’d link to it but it’s hidden away to only paid subscribers now) full of speculation and conjecture on where the chipset developer team might be redeployed without so much as a comment from nVidia. This hurts all of us and the media profession does not need another kick in the junk.

(I’m really setting myself up for a huge fall if I ever screw up big, eh?)