Nvidia bids to dislodge Intel as rivalry gets ugly

Intel and Nvidia are entering into a new, nasty phase of competition. What's at stake? Only the future of the personal computer. 

Though the Santa Clara, Calif., neighbors (only a couple of miles from each other) have never really been on speaking terms, the rivalry is intensifying with the emergence of the Netbook--small, lightweight laptops priced below $500. 

The competitive backdrop is still the same--Intel's longstanding (and very successful) vision of a CPU-centric universe versus Nvidia's creed that graphics processing matters more and more in a multimedia-intensive world. 

The challenge for Nvidia is that as laptops downsize into Netbooks, a graphics vacuum has been created. And Nvidia abhors a graphics vacuum.