News Intel GPUs - Falcon Shores cancelled

[NTMBK]

Am I the only person here who thinks Intel should release their Discrete GPU's immediately? Look at the market. How long does it take for Intel to make a GPU market ready? Didn't they hire the AMD GPU guru 3 or 4 years ago? All the secret tests well over a year ago. How long does it take them to make video drivers? They make their own CPU's. Opening a line for GPU's should not be too difficult for Intel.

It's not like Raja had the entire implementation of an AMD GPU committed to memory, and you can be damn sure that AMD didn't let him take any files with him to Intel! A product is produced by thousands of people- the right leadership will help, but they can't change things singlehandedly.

They needed to define the target market for their product, determine the parameters they had to work in, overhaul their architecture, overhaul their software stack, build up relationships with game developers, actually implement the multiple physical designs, wait for those designs to come back from the fab, debug those designs, send them back to the fab, potentially debug them again after that... It's a long process.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I am pretty excited about intel getting into this space. I am a big believer in the rule of three.
I am even more excited intel has recently said “On shelves Q1”

 

[kschendel]

I guess my point is the crazy GPU market. Intel has already demonstrated a discrete GPU for PC's. How long does it take for them to bring something to market? With prices for GPU's very high. You would think they wouldn't want to miss out on the market for GPU's. By the time Intel gets their GPU to market. Both AMD and Nvidia will be onto their next generation of GPU's making whatever Intel has now obsolete.

The crazy GPU market is exactly what makes words like "obsolete", obsolete.

We're in a world where people are willingly, if not happily, shelling out anywhere from $150 to $400 for a GTX 1050 Ti, simply because you can actually buy one.

If I were an IBM program manager for the discrete GPU program, I'd be shooting for "how can we make and ship 2x or 3x of these things compared to the competition", and who cares about performance as long as it's over some bare minimum. Sure, I'd want a roadmap to a flagship GPU that plays with the big boys, but at the end of the day, if you can't buy one without investing many hours stock-chasing and spending $$$$$ over MSRP, who really cares?

 

[Hans Gruber]

The crazy GPU market is exactly what makes words like "obsolete", obsolete.

We're in a world where people are willingly, if not happily, shelling out anywhere from $150 to $400 for a GTX 1050 Ti, simply because you can actually buy one.

If I were an IBM program manager for the discrete GPU program, I'd be shooting for "how can we make and ship 2x or 3x of these things compared to the competition", and who cares about performance as long as it's over some bare minimum. Sure, I'd want a roadmap to a flagship GPU that plays with the big boys, but at the end of the day, if you can't buy one without investing many hours stock-chasing and spending $$$$$ over MSRP, who really cares?

I guess my point is that Intel makes it's own CPU's. They have their own fab. They hired the AMD Radeon guru close to what seems like 4 years ago. This Raja fellow was trash talking Nvidia and AMD about his Intel GPU's. In the past Intel failed to build GPU's because they didn't have the know how. How many years does it take the AMD hired GPU Guru to have a finished product?

I wouldn't be asking this question had Intel not demonstrated their discrete GPU's at trade shows in the past. I am talking up to a year or more ago.

As more time goes by whatever Intel has will become obsolete as Nvidia moves on to their next generation GPU's and AMD releases RDNA3. With the crazy marketplace, it seems like a good time for Intel to let it rip. Even offering a discount on the GPU's saying they are a hybrid/beta or work in progress. Promotions like including an i7 11700 processor with the GPU. So if it fails, at least the consumer would have a new intel CPU.

 

[jpiniero]

I guess my point is that Intel makes it's own CPU's. They have their own fab. They hired the AMD Radeon guru close to what seems like 4 years ago. This Raja fellow was trash talking Nvidia and AMD about his Intel GPU's. In the past Intel failed to build GPU's because they didn't have the know how. How many years does it take the AMD hired GPU Guru to have a finished product?

Well, if you remember PV was supposed to use 7 nm. The gaming cards were likely to have been at 10 nm.

"how can we make and ship 2x or 3x of these things compared to the competition",

However many N6 wafers Intel bought, what 2 years ago? is what they are going to sell. There's no make 2-3x the competition.

 

[RnR_au]

However many N6 wafers Intel bought, what 2 years ago? is what they are going to sell. There's no make 2-3x the competition.

Couldn't they use the N6 for their server side gpu's, and their 10nm+++ for consumer cards? From my understanding they will not attempt to go toe-to-toe at the top end in the consumer space which should give them some space on their choice of process node.

In this market, who cares about perf/watt if the silicon is cheap?

 

[Leeea]

They have their own fab.

But they are not using that.

They are just using TSMC. So no game changing quantity here. Just another vaper ware product.


I do not know why they are just dipping their toes. But that is what they decided. No game changing push, just a dip of a toe.

 

[gdansk]

They're using TSMC so they cannot flood the market for the foreseeable future. Despite all the investment in fabs, Gelsinger has said there is no point moving Intel products to their own processes unless it avoids duplication of effort and will be competitive. For their discrete gaming GPUs I doubt it will make sense unless a lot changes at Intel manufacturing.

Secondly, as a newcomer it's probably not a good idea to rush the first product. I fully expect Intel GPUs will have enough annoying bugs (especially in drivers) even after their delays. In the end Intel graphics is coming to market at a very fortuitous time.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Intel's 10ESF should be fully committed to Alder Lake and Sapphire Rapids, plus some other stuff. I doubt they'll have enough left over to really make a difference in manufacturing Arc.

 

[moinmoin]

How many years does it take the AMD hired GPU Guru to have a finished product?

Depends on how you define "finished", Xe DG1 already exists after all.

 

[jpiniero]

Couldn't they use the N6 for their server side gpu's, and their 10nm+++ for consumer cards?

The decision to go with TSMC was a long time ago, long before this crypto surge happened. It's possible that the second gen product is fabbed at 10 nm but who knows.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Extra chips are extra chips. TSMC had this fab capacity set aside for Intel already, so it's not like it was going to AMD or anyone else. It'll increase supply, sure, but I doubt it'll do anything for supply or scalpers since whales will buy the first lot out of novelty if nothing else (and to see how proficient a miner can be).

 

[Shivansps]

Am I the only person here who thinks Intel should release their Discrete GPU's immediately? Look at the market. How long does it take for Intel to make a GPU market ready? Didn't they hire the AMD GPU guru 3 or 4 years ago? All the secret tests well over a year ago. How long does it take them to make video drivers? They make their own CPU's. Opening a line for GPU's should not be too difficult for Intel.

Well, OEMs are trying to ged rid of the DG1 stock as we speak, Asus is one of the OEMs with thousands of DG1 left and they are now offering to smaller players at good prices, along with modified bios files that support them in consumer motherboards.

So, it is happening already, it is clear that they want to get rid of them before the arrival of the smaller DG2.

 

[Dayman1225]

It’s official per Raja that Xe-HP will not be productised and was turned into a SW dev vehicle for Aurora and such.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1453808598283210752

 

[linkgoron]

I guess my point is that Intel makes it's own CPU's. They have their own fab. They hired the AMD Radeon guru close to what seems like 4 years ago. This Raja fellow was trash talking Nvidia and AMD about his Intel GPU's. In the past Intel failed to build GPU's because they didn't have the know how. How many years does it take the AMD hired GPU Guru to have a finished product?

Raja has a huge mouth and he loves to trash talk and hype stuff without actually having anything to back it up (Vega, Polaris somewhat etc.).

Having said that, if Intel can provide a GPU with 3070/6700xt with competitive perf/watt and perf/mm^2 (i.e. not something like Vega) that would be pretty impressive IMO. The other issue is that even if the hardware is good, it'll also need decent driver support to actually be competitive.

 

[NTMBK]

It’s official per Raja that Xe-HP will not be productised and was turned into a SW dev vehicle for Aurora and such.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1453808598283210752

Wow, Intel 10nm claims another victim. Not so long ago they were showing it off. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16238/intels-xehp-now-available-to-select-customers

 

[Dayman1225]

Wow, Intel 10nm claims another victim. Not so long ago they were showing it off. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16238/intels-xehp-now-available-to-select-customers

Not sure why you come to the conclusion that 10nm is the reason why..

 

[NTMBK]

Not sure why you come to the conclusion that 10nm is the reason why..

Why else would they scrap a GPU so far along, in today's market? If they could crank them out on their own 10nm process they could make money hand over fist.

 

[Hans Gruber]

Raja has a huge mouth and he loves to trash talk and hype stuff without actually having anything to back it up (Vega, Polaris somewhat etc.).

Having said that, if Intel can provide a GPU with 3070/6700xt with competitive perf/watt and perf/mm^2 (i.e. not something like Vega) that would be pretty impressive IMO. The other issue is that even if the hardware is good, it'll also need decent driver support to actually be competitive.

I hear you. I see your point. AMD said that they reason why they had many years where they were not competitive with Nvidia was the lack of R & D funds for their graphics card business. This of course was an end result of making shitty CPU's for a decade.

Intel makes CPU's, server chips, NIC cards for desktops and laptops, SSD drives, Motherboards, etc. I have a hard time thinking they cannot make some decent video drivers.

I just wish the semiconductor industry got back to the way it used to be. It's like the Asian memory makers had a holy shit moment when ram prices dropped. Suddenly consumers didn't want 8GB of ram they wanted 16,32 and 64GB machines. All because memory prices were cheap. This is not a supply and demand lesson, but a price fixing lesson. When they sell products at fair or cheap prices, people buy more.

 

[jpiniero]

Why else would they scrap a GPU so far along, in today's market? If they could crank them out on their own 10nm process they could make money hand over fist.

I'm sure it doesn't help that PV seems to have gotten a nice performance boost by dumping 10 nm for 5N.

 

[Dayman1225]

Why else would they scrap a GPU so far along, in today's market? If they could crank them out on their own 10nm process they could make money hand over fist.

I mean they have shipped over 70 million Tiger lake units on that same process and over 1 million Icelake SP dies on the original 10nm process - it’s likely that Xe-HP overlapped a lot with PVC in terms of performance and features and/or customers no longer thought it was necessary - so it was turned into a SW dev vehicle

 

[naukkis]

I'm sure it doesn't help that PV seems to have gotten a nice performance boost by dumping 10 nm for 5N.

PV changed 7nm Intel to 5nm TSMC. Or Intel 4 now. 10nm Xe-hp might have been pretty mediocre product - at least perf/watt.

 

[NTMBK]

I mean they have shipped over 70 million Tiger lake units on that same process and over 1 million Icelake SP dies on the original 10nm process - it’s likely that Xe-HP overlapped a lot with PVC in terms of performance and features and/or customers no longer thought it was necessary - so it was turned into a SW dev vehicle

Laptop SoCs and server CPUs have different process requirements from a high performance GPU.

 

[beginner99]

Not sure why you come to the conclusion that 10nm is the reason why..

Notably, it was also the only high-performance Xe silicon slated to be manufactured by Intel;

 

[jpiniero]

I mean they have shipped over 70 million Tiger lake units on that same process and over 1 million Icelake SP dies on the original 10nm process

70 mill isn't that much for a year+. Based upon what Gartner said about Q3, OEMs sold close to that many PC's with Intel just this quarter.