This is one particular rumor I had not heard. Apparently, a rumor that Intel was looking to kill off NVIDIA's Ion platform has been making rounds. With the bitter rivalry between the two firms on the integrated graphics front, it's not hard to see where the rumor got started.

Apparently, the core of the rumor was that Intel was not going to sell the Atom CPU that dominates the netbook market without it being bundled with an Intel chipset. This would have effectively killed Ion before it made its way into the market.

According to Engadget, an unnamed source at Intel has said that the chipmaker welcomes the sale of Atom CPUs individually. Intel has sold Atom as a package with a chipset and as a standalone CPU says the insider. Still, there is nothing to prevent Intel from offering netbook vendors massive discounts to use their chipsets rather than Ion. Bundle discounts are one of the key things that rivals like AMD have complained of.

Via Engadget