Rumor: Intel licensed AMD GPU tech for its integrated graphics

Before the summer, Kyle Bennett from HardOCP wrote a critical piece about AMD that discussed some of the whispers the site had heard about what's going on inside AMD. A large part of the article talked about how factions within AMD wanted to make the Radeon Technologies Group independent again, and that Raja Koduri was plotting to sell the unit to Intel.

That prediction hasn't come to pass but now Kyle Bennett claims Intel has inked a licensing deal with AMD that will put the latter's GPU technology into Intel's future integrated graphics.

Bennett claims Intel doesn't want this to be public and he doesn't provide further details so we can only speculate what this is about. One possibility is that Intel may use the AMD tech to improve its integrated graphics, while another option is that this is nothing more than covering the legal bases to give the Intel integrated graphics design team more freedom without having to worry about patent suits. Between the two of them, AMD and NVIDIA have so many graphics-related patents that it's hard to design a graphic chip without infringing on any of these patents.

At the moment, Intel has a five-year graphics technology license deal with NVIDIA but that agreement will expire in March 2017. Another rumor that is making the rounds is that there's disagreement between NVIDIA and Intel about the price for the renewal of this deal. So that's a third angle, it could be this new deal with AMD is a way to get out of the current deal with NVIDIA. I think this is the most likely option.

If there's any truth to this, we'll likely see something in AMD's future financial reports.