"Intel's actions are intended to block us from making use of the very license rights that they agreed to provide," said Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's CEO, in a statement.

Nvidia's filing underscores the substantive disagreement over terms of the license agreement between the companies, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.

"We have been unable to resolve the differences so we've asked the court to resolve it," Mulloy said.

As CPUs integrate more capabilities, Intel may be looking to shut out competitors and gain control over its future chip designs, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64. Intel will soon integrate graphics capabilities into laptop and desktop processors, which could affect Nvidia's graphics and chipset businesses.

Nvidia chipset business is dying and the suit may hurt efforts to hook it up with the profitable graphics card business, Brookwood said. By attacking the chipsets, Intel may be looking to promote its own integrated graphics chips, while shutting out Nvidia's graphics technology from PCs.