Nvidia has joined Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in complaining loudly about the tactics Intel uses to sell its products, especially the strong-arm bundling of video chips with CPUs.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is going to receive $1.25 billion from Intel within the next thirty days, bringing to a close all litigation between the two companies.

Intel is facing a federal antitrust lawsuit from New York’s Attorney General over claims it used “bribery and coercion” to maintain its market share. It follows a record fine of $1.45 billion imposed by the European Union over similar activity.

Intel and AMD are forming battle lines for another round of processor warfare, each warming up to win the battle of the new, slimmer laptops to be managed by Windows 7.

Intel’s short term plans include the production of system-on-a-chip products that will compete directly with ARM chips now being manufactured by Broadcom, Qualcomm, Samsung and Texas Instruments.

Samsung Electronics has been steadily growing into a major industry power since it surpassed Sony’s market value in 2002 and now finds itself within reach of industry leader Intel.

Giant chip-maker Intel has been buying up  specialty software companies in an effort to gain additional expertise in writing software for the multi-core processors that make up most of their lineup of CPUs.

Intel has, as expected, appealed against a record $1.45 billion fine it received from the European Union over competition violations. But it appears the firm is appealing against the process rather than the facts of the case.

Intel says it has found a way to produce solid state drives at less than half the existing price. It could be the last step to making the technology a serious mass-market alternative to traditional hard drives.

Semiconductor chip manufacturing is finally becoming a maturing technology, which may lead some current giants in the field to seek new growth markets in which to operate, such as building solar cells.

Intel is once again betting on flash memory to boost performance, this time planning to build the technology into it’s first chipset-on-a-chip architecture as well as new multi-chip configurations.

Intel has released the second version of its Moblin operating system for mobile devices. It hopes the system could steal some of Microsoft’s share of the growing market for netbooks.

A $1.45 billion fine from the European Union may not be the end of Intel’s financial pain on the continent. Competition lawyers have warned there’s a good chance that rival firms including AMD might now launch claims for damages against the company.

Acer has announced the pricing and availability of two new models in its Aspire netbook line, including one with an 11.6-inch screen. There’s no official definition on how large a netbook can be, but you can be certain the AO751h will crush any other netbook in its path.

With a couple of abrupt left turns, Dell has changed from a conservative company with zero tendency to experiment with non-Intel CPUs to a progressive company using Via chips in servers.

The European Union has hit Intel with a record fine for anti-competitive behavior. But the firm says it can’t understand the detail of the ruling and complains, “Antitrust agencies are testing the boundaries of the law.”

Several credible sources report that the European Union is likely to find Intel guilty of anti-competitive behavior this week. The firm could face the first ever two-billion dollar fine for such offenses.