What is well known however, is that a bunch of Alpha engineers wound up at AMD, and a lot of that DNA went into the OG Athlon

  > Intel developed QPI at its Massachusetts Microprocessor Design Center (MMDC) by
  > members of what had been the Alpha Development Group, which Intel had acquired
  > from Compaq and HP and in turn originally came from Digital Equipment
  > Corporation (DEC).[8] Its development had been reported as early as 2004

QPI was Intel's answer to the competition AMD's Athlon / HyperTransport had created