While staying far away from the word “merger”, Intel is coming forth and talking about a strategic partnership with nVidia. Already holding a considerable amount of nVidia shares, Intel wants to make a stab at AMD and ATI. Giving nVidia a bigger stake in Intel desktop boards for IGP and pushing GeForce more would definitely help both companies:

The partnership would imply that Nvidia decreases product developments for the AMD platform and devotes more efforts to IGP (integrated graphics processor) chipsets for the Intel platform, the sources said.
Of course, the most popular chipset for AMD processors is the nForce. Could that be about to change? That would be one disadvantage to Intel calling the shots for nVidia. Then again, that may be ATI's chance to shine with the Radeon XPress.