Speculations at rife stating that AMD is in the work of licensing its graphics IP to intel. Sure, it sounds unbelievable but the deal may make a sense. Questions may arise as to what kind of products Intel would wind up building? Neither Intel nor AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has given any comment pertaining to the rumors.
The speculations first escalated 5th of December from the chief editor of gaming site HardOCP. Kyle Bennett stated "The licensing deal between Intel and AMD is signed and done," continued "putting AMD GPU tech into Intel's iGPU," Kyle Bennet has contacts with Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA.
As per the report of Forbes, there are several reasons why this deal may seem possible but there are also some scenarios to be considered. First off is the Intel needs of patent cross-license agreement with either one of AMD or NVIDIA. Intel did sign a patent license agreement with NVIDIA just to settle a lawsuit back in 2011. Intel needs to pay NVIDIA $1.5 Billion to access NVIDIA's graphic patent portfolio that will end on March 31,2017.
Intel hasn't been showing any signs that it will renew its licensing with NVIDIA. Now, Intel is been taking small steps to AMD's side when it announced that the future Intel GPUs will be a FreeSync-compatible, much better than licensing G-sync from NVIDIA.
The second scenario would be an additional patent coverage where Intel use Radeon graphics to integrate it into Intel's PC processors. It makes Intel reliant on its big PC competitor and it would be an unprecedented move by the Intel. The second scenario is far more disruptive and complex. But it is one of the reasons why Intel would make such deal with AMD because Intel's graphic been labeled as "good enough." An IP license sure gives Intel a leg up in certain areas but it all depend on what kind of chip it wants to build and doesn't change a fact about Intel's position in the market, Extreme Tech reported.
Intel and AMD have never co-operated on the thought of AMD could build a custom GPU for Intel, there is a risk in making it happen. For the past five years, AMD has been losing money for they have been leaning the strength of their iGPU clearly hasn't helped them. The total APU business of AMD has severely collapsed and the only thing that keeping AMD alive right now is its console revenue.
AMD may be willing to sign a deal with Intel having $150-200 million per year as they needed the revenue Intel could offer to compete with NVIDIA, by launching itself into HPC space or just continue to advance its Zen CPU design. If both parties signed the deal, people can hear about it sooner. But things are more complicated as it raises more questions than answers
