I was talking with some folks about this and they mentioned that if Intel was serious about a discrete GPU division they would have scooped up all the ImgTech people when they could have.
What's the timeline for when Intel had the chance to pick up IMG, specifically?
Are we also using the narrative about Koduri's threat to pack things up and go to Intel, back when RTG formed?
For one thing, pickup of a team is facilitated by hiring execs or senior staff that know who to poach, although in IMG's case the party doing that was Apple--whose displeasure is a speculated reason for the Intel/AMD hybrid product. Also, IMG doesn't strictly play in the discrete GPU market of today.
Intel did just hire someone who can poach people with far more relevance, however.
My current working theory is that Intel has wanted to get in to the discrete graphics and more multi-threaded applications but they didn't have someone to make it all work, until AMD shafted Raja which is what gave someone at Intel the bright idea to make an IP deal with AMD and get Raja as part of it and BOOM, you got a chance at making a discrete graphics division that can compete today.
If we go by the HOCP narrative, Koduri was granted a rather significant amount of leeway and autonomy--potentially even forgiveness for what amounts to a declaration of mutiny.
It is possible that even then AMD didn't give enough in the end for what he wanted, but that's not to say a VP in charge of a division that he allegedly had the autonomy to maneuver into selling to Intel (while he helped make a movie?) was cheated.
RTG and Koduri did talk a big game for a while, and it seems like in AMD's constrained state and despite potentially serious conflicts (again, alleged mutiny threat) they did give him a chance to roll the dice.
I think AMD messed up by under appreciating Raja value, and now they're in a bit of a panic mode.
Appreciation is a feeling doesn't create funding or operational authority. He might have wanted to do more than AMD had resources to support. Maybe big talk to results delivered ratio didn't match the magnitude of his asking price.
I've been trying to find anything out and all I'm hearing are crickets, I don't think AMD has figured out quite how to handle this which makes me think they didn't see it coming.
According to some rumors, this specific threat is as old as the RTG.
One interesting thing I recall was Koduri's absence during the later Vega events, due to a wedding in India. I remember someone tweeted he was coming back some evening, and someone tweeted back a picture of him driving around in the US from earlier in the day. Possibly funny internal miscommunication with a PR person, or perhaps a sign of a different type of travel going on.
