HardOCP's Kyle Bennett this past May published an editorial in which he painted a rather bleak picture of the happenings inside AMD's walls. Specifically, Bennett - based on conversations with a number of current (at the time) and former employees - said Raja Koduri, leader of the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), wanted to spin off from the rest of AMD and once again become "ATI." Key to realizing this goal was to become the GPU technology supplier of choice for arch rival Intel.

Seems pretty far-fetched, no? Maybe not.

Intel said a month earlier that it was cutting 12,000 jobs due to the continued downturn in the PC industry. Bennett reported that well over 1,000 graphics engineers and employees working directly with graphics engineers were let go in anticipation of Intel handing over graphics-related tasks to AMD.

Fast-forward more than six months to late Monday evening where Bennett proclaims in the HardOCP forum that the licensing deal between AMD and Intel to put AMD's GPU technology into Intel's iGPU is signed and done.

If true and taken literally, it would be an unprecedented move from both parties (I have no reason to doubt Bennett or his sources as he was already established and respected long before I ever came online).

Forbes, on the other hand, floats the possibility that it could be little more than a patent cross-licensing play like the one Intel has in place with Nvidia to protect itself from patent infringement. That agreement, curiously enough, is set to expire on March 31, 2017 according to the publication.

Those interested in digging deeper are encouraged to check out Bennett's editorial, the 65 pages of subsequent discussion in HardOCP's forum and Forbes' write-up on the patent angle. Very interesting stuff.