An article on CNet this morning indicates that the outstanding lawsuits between Intel and VIA are now gone.

However, the news isn't all good.

The US manufacturer of CPUs and motherboard chipsets has agreed with the Taiwanese chip manufacturer to settle all outstanding lawsuits and to license the ability to produce Intel-compatible chipsets and processors.

The downside is that, under the agreement, the Via products will be required to work on their own bus, which means that Via will no longer be a viable supplier of alternate chipsets using Intel buses.

People in the know claim this agreement is similar to the agreement that allows AMD to manufacture the Athlon processor.