According to a story on the Tech Report, Nvidia has agreed to enable SLI on Intel's X58 chipset without the need of the Nforce 200 chipset which has been a major bugaboo with many of the motherboard manufacturers.

This is very good news, indeed, and we're not quite sure why Nvidia has come to its senses, but it seems to have something to do with not having its own QPI chipset. There's a small caveat though, as any motherboard manufacturer that wants to get SLI support on its motherboards has to send samples to Nvidia's HQ in Santa Clara to get them tested and verified, which we're sure Nvidia will be charging something or the other for.

One interesting point is that Tom Petersen from Nvidia is quoted as saying, "Not all board makers will be offered the same set of licensing options at the same price," which sound dodgy to us; and there might even be some tie-ins here for companies that sell other Nvidia based products, such as graphics cards, or maybe it's just based on expected shipment volume.

Once the board design has been verified by Nvidia, they will provide the motherboard manufacturer with what is currently known as a "cookie," which is a key that has to be embedded into the BIOS of that motherboard model to enable SLI support.

Interestingly, the article is also suggesting that it could be possible to hack a motherboard BIOS and extract the "cookie" and then implement it into a BIOS for a motherboard that doesn't have SLI support and Nvidia is meant to have said that it won't clamp down on the community for doing this.

You can find the full article here.