I’m sure it was, Intel has tried this before. It’s a good idea.
But it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple‘s announcement they were shipping it already pushed Intel and AMD to agree on implementation details so they could announce this and get it going.
They wouldn't announce it with zero results nor even any actual specification to show unless they were trying to show it off as soon as possible. Otherwise they could just wait until they, you know, actually did something, to announce it.
