NVIDIA's tight-lipped approach to insurance wins no battles

Other than the part about flooding with technical data, this is exactly what Nvidia did to us humble hacks here at The INQUIRER. Lots of words, much chest thumping about its greatness and infallibility, but never answering the question.

The questions that Nvidia will not answer are not at all out of line. To quote Page 12 Para 68:

"The information that NVIDIA has failed and/or refused to provide to National Union includes, but is not limited to, the following Material Information:
- Records showing the dates of manufacture of all affected notebook computers;
- Records showing the dates notebooks were shipped to end users;
- Records showing field failures to date, and the specific dates of those failures;
- Records showing the specific dates of repair of the affected notebooks;
- Records showing what component parts were replaced and when and why;
- Records showing any injury to component parts other than NVIDIA chips, including descriptions and dates of injuriers; and
- Documentation of settlement discussions, NVIDIA's estimation of claim exposure, and supporting documentation of any estimate."

Do these sound like things that are reasonable to ask before an insurance company pays out?

Reading the fine print in the suit, you can see there are several good reasons why Nvidia is playing dumb. The first is the civil lawsuits, if Nvidia admits anything to anyone, it will surely have a harder time defending against those civil lawsuits. You could say that what is going on is obvious to even a slow monkey, and we knew over a year before that some Nvidia GPU parts that were out were problematic.

Luckily for Nvidia, it is still in the dark, claiming that the science behind the cracking bumps is not understood. Somehow, every packaging expert talked to by The INQUIRER understood it, was able to explain it, and the explanations all matched up. Nvidia might want to hire one of these guys in the future to fill the glaring hole in its corporate semiconductor knowledge base.

Secondly, NUFI is claiming that Nvidia did not involve it in the negotiations for which it is being asked to pay Nvidia's settlements. Nvidia's insurance policy states that NUFI must be involved in any such negotiations, or at least that it must be given the opportunity to decline to do so.

It looks like Nvidia didn't provide NUFI with details, then sent it a bill with a big number on it. NUFI wisely declined to pay.