With the ongoing patent-licensing scuffle between chip-makers Nvidia and Intel having intensified, Nvidia has deferred the development of new NForce chipsets that ply Intel's microprocessors, accusing Intel of resorting to "unfair business tactics."

According to the February-filed patent-licensing lawsuit, both Nvidia and Intel have counter-accused each other of violating a chip-licensing deal signed in 2004.

While Intel claimed that Nvidia was not licensed to produce chipsets covering Intel's new Nehalem-based DMI bus that helps link the CPU to the system's memory; Nvidia said the agreement covered the bus, thereby allowing it to make chipsets for new Intel processors.

As per a statement by the Nvidia spokesman, though the company will continue supplying the current-generation NForce chipsets in the market, it has decided to halt the progress of new NForce chipsets for the CPUs of Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

The Nvidia spokesman said: "Because of Intel's improper claims to customers and the market that we aren't licensed to the new DMI bus and its unfair business tactics, it is effectively impossible for us to market chipsets for future CPUs."

In the opinion of Dean McCarron, chief analyst at Mercury Research, Nvidia's postponement of investments in the development of chipsets for Intel's processors will help the company reap short-term monetary benefits, putting its chipset business in a "cash cow" mode, which implies steady income and no research-and-development expenditure!