News Intel GPUs - Battlemage officially announced, evidently not cancelled

[Karnak]

Gotta figure with Intel's brutal results they have to be at least thinking about pulling the plug on Arc. Maybe they will let DG2 run it's course and then call it a day.

Pretty sure that's the case. Don't know why but after that earnings report and their guidance for the near future... Cancelling Arc was literally the first thing I was thinking of. Don't know why.

 

[jpiniero]

That would be short-sighted and reactionary.

How are they going to make money with the chips being fabbed at expensive TSMC?

 

[JasonLD]

How are they going to make money with the chips being fabbed at expensive TSMC?

Like how Nvidia and AMD does it?
GPUs are part of their future Data Center product plan and I don't see them giving up on them anytime soon though. Unless you are talking about consumer dGPUs.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Pretty sure that's the case. Don't know why but after that earnings report and their guidance for the near future... Cancelling Arc was literally the first thing I was thinking of. Don't know why.

This is exactly the thing they need to stop doing if they want to expand.* It makes sense from an immediate revenue only point of view, but sticking until it works is how you survive and eventually thrive. In some ways stock prices and product quality work counter to each other. Dividends and buybacks are all revenue plus. So is cutting R&D and CapEx. But let's see in ten years how you fare.

There's a girl in China that entered university and she went to school everyday by climbing on ropes. How many people have the persistence to do that? That and the government making less-stupid decisions than the US in regards to startups and investments is why US Is in a decline and China is regarded to be the future superpower by many.

*This is what I hope Gelsinger Intel does.

 

[jpiniero]

Unless you are talking about consumer dGPUs.

Yes. They are pretty much different products at this point.

The other option would be to put Arc on ice until (if) they manage to get an internal node worth using rather than use TSMC.

 

[JasonLD]

Yes. They are pretty much different products at this point.

The other option would be to put Arc on ice until (if) they manage to get an internal node worth using rather than use TSMC.

No, what Intel needs to do is keep on releasing Arc and keep improving their drivers. That would only work for the short term but would be a horrible move for a long term.

 

[Aapje]

Some info on the driver issues:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1552775061400342529

 

[maddie]

Some info on the driver issues:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1552775061400342529

iGPU software was expected to meet demands but wasnt.

That seems very amateurish for a company with the reputation of Intel. This speaks volumes to the state of organization.

 

[Saylick]

Gotta figure with Intel's brutal results they have to be at least thinking about pulling the plug on Arc. Maybe they will let DG2 run it's course and then call it a day.

Just a rumor for now, but the rumor mill is all saying that the Intel higher ups are considering pulling the plug. No word of whether or not they will do it, just considering it, and if they do pull the plug, it won't be expected. Until the day it happens, if it happens, Intel's marketing won't telegraph the decision at all.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

That would be short-sighted and reactionary.

- So did you just learn about Intel yesterday or...

Anyhow, wow what an absolute Hindenburg here. This is shaping up to be more of a slow rolling disaster than I had anticipated.

 

[eek2121]

Just a rumor for now, but the rumor mill is all saying that the Intel higher ups are considering pulling the plug. No word of whether or not they will do it, just considering it, and if they do pull the plug, it won't be expected. Until the day it happens, if it happens, Intel's marketing won't telegraph the decision at all.
<snip>

That rumor came from a terrible Youtuber. You even linked him.

Intel is not planning to cancel their GPUs.

You should stop watching that garbage. I'm serious. RGT is nearly always wrong and most of the stories they share are fabricated. I use "most" to be pleasant and understanding.

I normally don't put myself on the line like this, but Intel would cease selling CPUs before they cancelled GPUs. Margins in the enterprise GPU market are far higher than the x86 CPU market.

 

[ElFenix]

I hope so because the A380 has terrible idle power consumption based on this review:

Intel Arc A380 Review - Runs Fine on AMD Ryzen

Intel Arc A380 is the first graphics card that the Blue Team is releasing this year. It's based on the new Xe "Alchemist" architecture, which includes support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. In our in-depth review of the A380 we check rasterization performance, RT performance, power, heat...

www.techpowerup.com

Kind of puts the damper on buying it for a transcoding card in a server to me.

17W vs how much does your processor eat when transcoding?

 

[NTMBK]

I hope Gelsinger isn't so short sighted as to cancel GPUs. They have potential, and we need a third player.

 

[HurleyBird]

Might make sense to do some housecleaning in the department, however.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I hope Gelsinger isn't so short sighted as to cancel GPUs. They have potential, and we need a third player.

-Even after 5 years, the fact that Intel can launch something and even land in the same vicinity as AMD/NV within similar silicon characteristics is cause enough to continue, IMO.

It's not good, but it's not a total blow out

 

[Leeea]

Gotta figure with Intel's brutal results they have to be at least thinking about pulling the plug on Arc. Maybe they will let DG2 run it's course and then call it a day.

If so, ARC380s will gain a lot of value! As a collectors item.

I think if Intel cancels its GPU project this time around it is game over for Intel. Sooner or later Intel will need to make a powerful APU.

Yes, apples m1 "flopped"* on round 1, but Apple will come back with a more compelling product. Eventually Apple, Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm, or AMD will put together a SOC that rules them all. Without a GPU, that day will be the end of the line for Intel.

Intel needs a GPU if it is to have a future.


*failed to dominate the market

 

[Karnak]

Don't think it's about "GPUs" as a whole but rather the dGPU/gaming/desktop market. I can totally see them to cancel that and just focus on the PV type of GPUs.

 

[Leeea]

Spoiler: Off topic rebuttal of IntelUser2000's claims of Chinese dominance.

That and the government making less-stupid decisions than the US in regards to startups and investments is why US Is in a decline and China is regarded to be the future superpower by many.

China will cease to be a major anything in about 10 years.

China Isn’t That Strategic

The country is often portrayed as a master of long-term thinking. It’s not that simple.

www.theatlantic.com

The size of the 65-and-over set will likely double over the next two decades as the workforce shrinks, making China a “super-aged society.” A Chinese-government commission has estimated that the elderly would account for about one-third of the country’s population by 2050.

Guess that 1 child policy was a mistake.

The demographic drag will be so severe, Mark Williams, the firm’s chief Asia economist, told me, that he thinks China’s economy will likely never surpass America’s.

Looks like the USA's golden age gets to run another century.

There's a girl in China that entered university and she went to school everyday by climbing on ropes. How many people have the persistence to do that?

She is going to need that grit. She is going to have to support an elderly population for her entire career. It is going to be brutal for her. Wonder how she is even going to afford having children?

 

[Leeea]

The questionable source, MLID, is claiming Arc is being cancelled:

Spoiler: youtube link

Grain of salt though.

I hope not, Intel needs a GPU to survive.

 

[Karnak]

tbf a lot of his leaks in the past regarding Intel stuff were spot on and true.

If even he is now reporting that...

 

[mikk]

Just a rumor for now, but the rumor mill is all saying that the Intel higher ups are considering pulling the plug. No word of whether or not they will do it, just considering it, and if they do pull the plug, it won't be expected. Until the day it happens, if it happens, Intel's marketing won't telegraph the decision at all.

All at the same time is no coincidence. The rumor mill (techtubers) were most likely fed from just one guy/source which in my opinion is fishy. And note that all of them don't say they are shutting it down, they are saying it is considered. So in some time when it's clear it didn't happen nobody can see they were wrong because they didn't say Intel shut it down.

 

[DrMrLordX]

As bad as Alchemist is right now, it would be disappointing for them to cancel Battlemage. Also, Battlemage is an excellent way for them to chew up all that N3 that they're on the hook for right now.

 

[HurleyBird]

The questionable source, MLID, is claiming Arc is being cancelled:

Spoiler: youtube link

Grain of salt though.

I hope not, Intel needs a GPU to survive.

Not what he said. Maybe you should watch the video.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I share the same concern as many others. That being, buying Intel dGPUs and a year or 2 from now having driver support abandoned. While I might risk my own money anyways, I would not spec them in clients builds.

Many of us have quipped about how Intel abandons new markets far too readily. Combine that with the Q2 results, serious market contraction, and high probability of a looming global recession, and suddenly, Intel scaling the division way back starts sounding reasonable. They have proved time and again the sunk cost fallacy won't make them double down when things are going south.

 

[mikk]

A380 retest with the beta driver: https://www.igorslab.de/en/intel-arc-a380-and-the-drawcalls-where-is-the-api-overhead/


Slightly higher performance, the main improvement is it runs much more stable. The big problem performance related is clearly the big driver overhead, they have to improve a lot on this.