A few days ago Linux messiah Linus Torvalds made his feelings about Nvidia clear, with some colorful language and a finger. Torvalds wasn’t too happy about Nvidia’s Linux support and the issue seems to be coming back to haunt the Green Goblin.

It seems that Nvidia lost a massive order for about 10 million GPUs a few weeks back. The order was placed by the Chinese government and Nvidia was supposed to supply the GPUs for a batch of computers based on the Longsoon processor and a homegrown Linux-based OS.

The only trouble was that Longsoon is a MIPS based processor and Nvidia’s Linux driver doesn’t quite get it yet. Nvidia reckoned that it would take it tens of millions of dollars to ensure MIPS compatibility, so in the end the contract was lost.

AMD eventually won the sizable contract, as it could deliver MIPS compatibility. The value of the contract is estimated at more than $200 million, while some punters believe AMD could rake in as much as $500 million.

More here.