Intel Kills Rumors Of ‘Confirmed’ GPU Licensing Agreement With AMD
When is a confirmation not really a confirmation? The answer: when it originates from a rumor site rather than a company official. In case anyone needed another lessen in this, Intel has broke its silence and is flat out denying rumors that it inked a licensing deal with AMD for its graphics technology. That suggests that it will continue licensing graphics IP from NVIDIA, though that has not been confirmed.
"The recent rumors that Intel has licensed AMD's graphics technology are untrue," an Intel spokesperson told Barron's Tech Trader Daily.
Intel provided the statement after a report by Fudzilla claiming it was able to "confirm the rumors that Intel has given up on NVIDIA because it has written a check to license AMD's graphics." It is a rumor that has been circulating for a long while now, with HardOCP's Kyle Bennett stating back in December of last year that "the licensing deal between AMD and Intel is signed and done for putting AMD GPU tech into Intel's iGPU."
AMD saw some short term benefit from the rumor with its share price climbing 12 percent following the supposed confirmation of a deal between it and Intel. However, AMD's share dropped more than 12 percent by the closing bell yesterday after Intel's denial started to make the rounds.
To be fair, this could be a matter of semantics. When pressed by Tech Trader Daily for further details, including whether Intel has definitely decided not to license technology from AMD, Intel opted not to provide any further details. It is also worth mentioning that AMD filed patent infringement lawsuits (PDF) against several companies earlier this year, including LG, MediaTek, Sigma Designs, and Vizio, each of which stands accused of using AMD's graphics IP without permission.
While Intel is denying that it has licensed AMD's graphics technologies, it's possible that Intel inked some sort of agreement to avoid a potential lawsuit, and that industry insiders picked up on that. However, any hopes of Intel pairing AMD's Vega GPU architecture with its Kaby Lake CPU architecture are pretty much dashed.
"The recent rumors that Intel has licensed AMD's graphics technology are untrue," an Intel spokesperson told Barron's Tech Trader Daily.
Intel provided the statement after a report by Fudzilla claiming it was able to "confirm the rumors that Intel has given up on NVIDIA because it has written a check to license AMD's graphics." It is a rumor that has been circulating for a long while now, with HardOCP's Kyle Bennett stating back in December of last year that "the licensing deal between AMD and Intel is signed and done for putting AMD GPU tech into Intel's iGPU."
AMD saw some short term benefit from the rumor with its share price climbing 12 percent following the supposed confirmation of a deal between it and Intel. However, AMD's share dropped more than 12 percent by the closing bell yesterday after Intel's denial started to make the rounds.
To be fair, this could be a matter of semantics. When pressed by Tech Trader Daily for further details, including whether Intel has definitely decided not to license technology from AMD, Intel opted not to provide any further details. It is also worth mentioning that AMD filed patent infringement lawsuits (PDF) against several companies earlier this year, including LG, MediaTek, Sigma Designs, and Vizio, each of which stands accused of using AMD's graphics IP without permission.
While Intel is denying that it has licensed AMD's graphics technologies, it's possible that Intel inked some sort of agreement to avoid a potential lawsuit, and that industry insiders picked up on that. However, any hopes of Intel pairing AMD's Vega GPU architecture with its Kaby Lake CPU architecture are pretty much dashed.
