Rumors on Wall Street and a speculative article in the Financial Times have IBM possibly playing Prince Charming to AMD's Cinderella and either digging into its jeans for an equity investment or carrying it off in an outright merger with IBM Microelectronics - tittle-tattle that helped keep AMD's stock afloat during Wall Street's latest finger-biting downturn.

AMD, which reported a $1.77 billion Q4 loss last week largely on ATI write-offs, bit off way more than it could chew when it bought the graphics house for $5.6 billion and then it botched the delivery of its live-saving Barcelona quad. It claims to have a clever AssetSmart manufacturing strategy but won't tell anybody what it is.

It's already dependent on IBM for some of its cutting-edge chip technology and it's generally recognized that AMD needs more money even after that $622 million 8.1% equity infusion from Abu Dhabi at the tail end of last year.

It's also speculated that IBM has the patent and cross-license juice to quash any loss of x86 rights a takeover could entail.

However, the smart money thinks such a tie-up unlikely.