The latest rumor mill talks about Intel and AMD made a deal that should help Intel in developing better integrated graphics solutions for their processors. The partnership is still in undercover mode since there wasn’t any official announcement regarding the partnership from Intel and AMD.
Since AMD is currently providing hardware for both the PS4 and the Xbox One, and the company also has supreme integrated graphics solutions (best seen in AMD’s APU line) it’s pretty strange for AMD to partner with Intel, but sources claim the deal is already signed.
One report states that Intel is currently focused on improving their integrated GPU technology but once the deal goes official, AMD will take the helm, providing Intel with better graphics solution. It seems logical that Intel will also have to offer something, so AMD may, in the end, get some interesting technology from Intel that should make their CPUs faster and more power optimized.
Someone will surely ask “why AMD, why not NVidia?” Well, Intel and NVidia aren’t having a perfect relationship. The two companies fought numerous battles over licensing issues ever since 2009. At the end Intel managed to break free, getting rights for making their own graphics, but for a huge price. Intel had to pay NVidia $1.5 billion, which the company paid last year.
The deal may infuse AMD with additional funds, according to Game Debate. AMD is in problems, the company has debts to pay and not enough funds to allocate to its R&D segment. AMD could also receive lots of positive publicity since they can dominate integrated GPU market if Intel decides to allow AMD to supply Intel with integrated graphics chips.
On the other hand, NVidia managed to bring powerful mobile graphic cards based on the Pascal architecture, and it will be interesting to see will both AMD’s and Intel’s CPUs sport AMD graphics in the future.