Intel has appointed ex-Radeon Technologies Group boss Raja Koduri, confirming the news rumoured earlier this week. In another surprising twist, Koduri will be joining Intel as chief architect and senior vice president of its new Core and Visual Computing Group. He’ll be working on high-end graphics card solutions and going head-to-head with AMD Radeon and Nvidia GeForce. It’s not often that the hardware industry turns into a full-blown soap opera, but it is today.

"Raja is one of the most experienced, innovative and respected graphics and system architecture visionaries in the industry and the latest example of top technical talent to join Intel,” said Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, Intel's chief engineering officer and group president of the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and System Architecture. Try fitting that on a business card.

“We have exciting plans to aggressively expand our computing and graphics capabilities and build on our very strong and broad differentiated IP foundation. With Raja at the helm of our Core and Visual Computing Group, we will add to our portfolio of unmatched capabilities, advance our strategy to lead in computing and graphics, and ultimately be the driving force of the data revolution.”

Koduri himself has also published a statement, just a day since his heartfelt goodbye to AMD. “I have admired Intel as a technology leader and have had fruitful collaborations with the company over the years. I am incredibly excited to join the Intel team and have the opportunity to drive a unified architecture vision across its world-leading IP portfolio that helps accelerate the data revolution.”

This news now obviously extends far beyond Koduri’s involvement, and indeed beyond the use of Radeon graphics chips in Intel CPUs. Intel is now potentially a third pillar in the graphics card market. One which, like AMD, can offer both halves of a solution. It’s also got a heck of a lot of financial clout and could prove extremely disruptive to the market. The results of this deal are clearly going to be a ways off but the ramifications could well be huge.

Action and reaction? Thoughts on Intel’s big move and Raja jumping ship? Let us know!