Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Chips: Intel Will Have Graphics Processing Units by 2020 (INTC; NVDA; AMD)

From The Register, June 13:

Intel confirms it’ll release GPUs in 2020 
They sell like hot cakes so why wouldn’t Chipzilla want in?
Intel has confirmed it will start to sell discrete GPUs in the year 2020.

News of Chipzilla’s plans appeared in a post by analyst Ryan Shrout, who said that Intel CEO Brian Krasnich last week told an analyst event about the company’s plans.

Intel confirmed Shrout’s piece, telling us "We’re pleased to confirm our first discrete GPU is coming in 2020. As we’ve previously stated, our intent is to expand our leading position in integrated graphics for the PC market with high-end discrete graphics solutions for a broad range of computing segments."

Details remain scanty, but a move into GPUs would be entirely sensible for a few reasons.
Firstly, they’re selling like hot cakes and demand is so high they can sometimes be hard to find. Intel would be mad not to offer buyers another source given AMD and NVIDIA can hardly shove their kit out of a fab fast enough to keep up with demand.

Second, Intel recently discontinued its Xeon Phi co-processor line. GPUs would be a more-than-handy replacement for the Phi.

Third, GPUs are Just Becoming The Way Stuff Gets Done, especially in markets like AI, HPC and visualization in which Intel already plays. Not doing GPUs would therefore be stupid....MORE