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Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

tomshardware.com

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Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#121

Post by phkahler »

scrlk wrote: post #36

> For personal computing, Intel will build and offer to the market x86 system-on-chips (SOCs) that integrate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets. These new x86 RTX SOCs will power a wide range of PCs that demand integration of world-class CPUs and GPUs. https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1750/... What’s old is new again: back in 2017, Intel tried something similar with AMD (Kaby Lake-G). They paired a Kaby La…

I don't think this is Intel trying to save itself, it's nVidia. Intel GPUs have been in 3rd place for a long time, but their integrated graphics are widely available and come in 2nd place because nVidia can't compete in the x86 space. Intel graphics have been closing the gap with AMD and are now within what? A factor of 2 or less (1.5?)

IMHO we will soon see more small/quiet PCs without a slot for a graphics card, relying on integrated graphics. nVidia has no place in that future. But now, by dropping $5B on Intel they can get into some of these SoCs and not become irrelevant.

The nice thing for Intel is that they might be able to claim graphics superiority in SoC land since they are currently lagging in CPU.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#122

Post by esseph »

seanalltogether wrote: post #60

It feels like the end is in sight for dedicated graphics chips in consumer devices. Phones, consoles, and now Apple silicon are proving that SoC designs with unified memory and focused thermals are a winning strategy for efficiency and speed. Nvidia may be happy enough to move the graphics strategy onto an SoC and keep discrete boards just for AI.

Yet here I am just frothing for GPUs

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#123

Post by xbar »

kllrnohj wrote: post #72
jfdi wrote: post #26

Great news for all involved. It also would seem to validate Apple’s unified architecture for inference, and imply AMD is getting close…

You mean AMD's unified architecture. They were a founder of the HSA Foundation that drove innovation in this space complete with Linux kernel investments and unified compute SDKs, and they had the first shipping hardware support.

This is a strong take.

AMD's actual commitment to open innovation over the past ~20 years has been game changing in a lot of segments. It is the aspect of AMD that makes it so much more appealing than intel from a hacker/consumer perspective.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#124

Post by vid »

wheybags wrote: post #68

I wonder what this means for Intel's Arc lineup. Would be a bit crazy to have privileged access to a competitor's roadmap through just owning a chunk of them. I also have to admit I really hope they dont cancel them. A triopoly is at least better than a duopoly (or realistically, a monopoly as AMD's competitiveness in gpus is pretty questionable)

That's what I think of, along with favour from their new investment sibling, the US government. AMD doesn't want to be super competitive, they like their margins and being second choice in a hypetastic market. Even though Arc has very low adoption, it was making signs of doing scrappy things, like enabling two 24GB GPUs on one card from third party vendors, which got the hobby/upstart community pretty excited. Ultimately it's not a real market giving the people what they want via competition, it's all contrived by politics and the biggest players.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#125

Post by esseph »

glimshe wrote: post #93
ur-whale wrote: post #7

5B is a fairly tiny stake (Intel's market cap is around 120B), other than the "we're now working together" signal, why is this news?

This is a technology forum first and foremost. I know it might not look that way given the recent flood of political activism articles. But, in the technology field, this is pretty big news. This stake makes Nvidia one of Intel's biggest shareholders.

There is a good chance this was required by politicians, and is therefore political activism.

:-)

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#126

Post by gregoryl »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #92
imiric wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might damage intel, but given they're circling the drain already, it's hard to make matters worse. How was Intel "circling the drain"? They have a very competitive offering of CPUs, APUs, and GPUs, and the upcoming Panther Lake and Nova Lake architectures are very promising. Their products compete with AMD, NVIDIA, and ARM SoCs from the likes of Apple. Intel may have been in a rut years ago, but they've recovere…

None of their products are competitive, they fired the CEO who was meant to save them, fired tens of thousands of their engineers, sold off massive chunks of the company, they're still bleeding money and begging for state support? Also their network cards no longer work properly which is deeply aggravating as that used to be something I could rely on, just bought some realtek ones to work around the intel ones fallin…

I have bad news about realtek networking...

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#127

Post by wirybeige »

phkahler wrote: post #121
scrlk wrote: post #36

> For personal computing, Intel will build and offer to the market x86 system-on-chips (SOCs) that integrate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets. These new x86 RTX SOCs will power a wide range of PCs that demand integration of world-class CPUs and GPUs. https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1750/... What’s old is new again: back in 2017, Intel tried something similar with AMD (Kaby Lake-G). They paired a Kaby La…

I don't think this is Intel trying to save itself, it's nVidia. Intel GPUs have been in 3rd place for a long time, but their integrated graphics are widely available and come in 2nd place because nVidia can't compete in the x86 space. Intel graphics have been closing the gap with AMD and are now within what? A factor of 2 or less (1.5?) IMHO we will soon see more small/quiet PCs without a slot for a graphics card, re…

Xe2 is superior to current AMD integrated already

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#128

Post by xbar »

euLh7SM5HDFY wrote: post #66
Panzer04 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbf, If I were Nvidia and antitrust wasn't an issue I'd be tempted to buy the whole thing. Intel has a market cap just 2.5% of NVDA, so you could give away just 2.5% of your stock to buy the entirety of Intel. It's bonkers.

If that happened I would expect the same success story as with Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger.

Why? That is an example of a bad engineering company being acquired and then poisoning the quality of the acquirer with its toxic, low-quality, corporate-politics-above-engineering culture.

There have been a lot of mergers where that has not happened.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#129

Post by DanielHB »

adrr wrote: post #116
mschuster91 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would either of these three be interested in buying a fab? The only other large player with its own fab is Samsung and Samsung has the same problem that Intel has, namedly a fab that is nowhere near close to TSMC. I agree that Intel would be better served to spin off its fab division, a potential buyer could be the US government for military and national security relevant projects.

Someone could be interested. It could also be Global Foundries. High risk big reward bet which the government is willing to help mitigate some of the risk with funding. They just need to separate business units.

Not an expert in the area, but I think the highest of the high-end chips is a big market, but not the biggest market as revenue for fabs. It is just the most profitable part of the market.

Maybe this changed with the AI race but there are plenty of people buying older chips by the millions for all sorts of products.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#130

Post by KeplerBoy »

sho_hn wrote: post #13

nVidia has also been licensing their GPU IP to MediaTek recently, who are working on a 2nd generation of a SoC that combines their ARM cores with nVidia GPUs now, catering to e.g. the automotive market. Looks like using GPU IP to take over other brands' product lines is now officially an nVidia strategy. I guess the obvious worry here is whether Intel will continue development of their own dGPUs, which have a lovely…

Seems Nvidia needs an alternative to MediaTek or wants to pressure MediaTek given the announcement of x86 Intel/Nvidia SoCs and the delay of DGX Spark, GB10 and N1X.

They wanted to launch DGX Spark early summer and it's nowhere to be seen, while strix halo is shipping in over 30+ SKUs from all major manufacturers.

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