Nehalem to Be Compatible with NVidia SLI!?

If the SLI has been for a long time restricted to hardcore gamers, the availability of CUDA has changed the environment, and SLI could become a way to increase GPU performance without offering faster GPUs. It seems that NVidia could accept to license its SLI technology to third-party, and not restrict it only to AMD processor-dedicated motherboards, but open it to Nehalem-compatible motherboards.
However, it will of course not be easy. To have the SLI functional on a non-NVidia branded motherboard, one will need an extra chips on the board. In addition to the R&D costs linked to its integration, this chips will be priced 30 USD. So for the time being, NVidia decided to lock the SLI via a hardware protection, instead of licensing the technology to third parties at the firmware level which could have been simpler to implement in existing and future chipsets. But things might also change till the end of the year, when the Nehalem is supposed to be released, and the current success of AMD/ATI with the new Radeons could force NVidia to revise its current position about SLI. Especially if we consider that the new Radeon are pretty impressive when associated via the CrossFire technology, AMD/ATI's equivalent to NVidia's SLI.
This could only be positive for Mac users as Snow Leopard should (finally) support multiple graphic cards (in SLI and/or CrossFire settings).