That theory doesn't really make sense. Nvidia didn't need AMD's permission to write a high-quality compute interface. Why would AMD need Nvidia's? AMD has their own internal opinions for how well they want compute to work; if OpenCL isn't doing it for them they should have figured that out quickly and then built their own layer as a stopgap. But we've seen what happens when they do that; ROCm. The problem is that they don't really know how and it is a glaring capability gap (didn't know I suppose - I expect they're learning fast).
If anything, the situation with OpenCL suggests AMD and friends were the ones dragging their feet. Nvidia correctly identified that being led by the OpenCL committee would lock them out of billions (trillions, if you believe the stock market) of profit and routed around the blockage rather than compromise their engineering standards.
If anything, the situation with OpenCL suggests AMD and friends were the ones dragging their feet. Nvidia correctly identified that being led by the OpenCL committee would lock them out of billions (trillions, if you believe the stock market) of profit and routed around the blockage rather than compromise their engineering standards.