AMD/Intel alliance, CPU and GPU tech sharing

[superstition]

The rumor mill has been talking about the expiration of Intel's agreement with Nvidia. Here are two examples:

Intel might be about to give AMD a massive boost
Intel And AMD : A Marriage On The Cards?

2011, Intel and Nvidia agreed to a cross licensing deal that gave both companies a license to each other’s patents. The deal will to come to an end in 2017 and rumours have begun to circulate that Intel may be considering making a similar deal with AMD this time around.

In order to license Nvidia’s technology, Intel paid the company $1.5 billion over the course of five years. An investment of that size could be quite useful for AMD seeing as the company has steadily lost ground to its rival Nvidia in the graphics card market over the past few years. On the CPU side of things, Intel has gone unchallenged by AMD’s chips for quite some time as well.

Perhaps Zen isn't going to be much of a challenge to Intel after all — but not for the reasons some have speculated about.

The focus of the rumor has mostly been on GPU tech but some of the sites have speculated that it could involve CPU tech sharing, especially if AMD is giving Intel iGPU tech in exchange for something.

(What will happen to all the fan wars?)

 

[TheELF]

Intel is in cahoots with amd ever since ibm gave them both the task of producing cpus for them...
I think it's more probable that intel is going to cross license amd as well and not exclusively.

Intel is late to the game (for graphics) so anything they want to make is already licensed so they have to make cross licensing deals.

 

[Doom2pro]

Intel is in cahoots with amd ever since ibm gave them both the task of producing cpus for them...
I think it's more probable that intel is going to cross license amd as well and not exclusively.

Intel is late to the game (for graphics) so anything they want to make is already licensed so they have to make cross licensing deals.

IBM didn't ask AMD to make CPUs for them, that was Global Foundries... Never heard about the Intel bit, got any references?

 

[Bryf50]

IBM didn't ask AMD to make CPUs for them, that was Global Foundries... Never heard about the Intel bit, got any references?

I think he's talking about the IBM PC days. IBM required 2 sources of CPUs for the IBM PC so Intel signed a contract with AMD to produce their designs.

 

[Doom2pro]

I think he's talking about the IBM PC days. IBM required 2 sources of CPUs for the IBM PC so Intel signed a contract with AMD to produce their designs.

Ahh....

 

[frozentundra123456]

As you can see by the date on those articles, this rumor has been around for a while. I think there was already a thread about it. Could be just a ploy to pressure nVidia into negotiating a better deal for intel. Seems odd that AMD would license the only thing they are competitive in at the moment to their biggest competitor.

 

[swilli89]

Makes sense. nVidia is actually Intels largest competitor in the HPC space. If I was Intel I would keep the lesser of two evils around (AMD) and try to run nvidia out. They can effectively continue to mitigate AMD in the CPU market and eliminate NV from the server and HPC market.

 

[Zodiark1593]

As neither have a strong presence in Mobile, and Intel competes with Nvidia in HPC, not to mention killing AMD may be detrimental to Intel, a truce is probably the most prudent option. AMD does not have a strong HPC presence themselves, so such a move should be reasonably safe from antitrust suits.

 

[jhu]

How is Xeon Phi doing in the HPC space compared with NVidia's offerings? Apparently NVidia's chips are selling like hot cakes.

 

[The Stilt]

I wouldn't mind seeing AMD GPUs being integrated into Intel CPUs / SoCs :awe:

Superior CPU performance, spear head process technology (i.e own fabs), existing eDRAM IPs...

 

[IntelUser2000]

It's a big jump from assuming patent sharing to using a whole product.

The Gen X likely has advantages that fit in Intel's favor. One being that with Gen 9, its built so they can quickly make different variants. That fits well into Intel's culture of being manufacturing oriented, AKA cost optimization. Also if they want a Radeon part they'd have to redesign the Radeon part to be integrated into their CPU core. Totally different core + totally different process, it's a LOT of work.

Nortel Networks when it got bankrupt its numerous(thousands) of patents were being sold to various companies. No one outside the companies involved know where they are being used, if they are being used at all!

It's fun to assume such scenarios but, that's about it.