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Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

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Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#151

Post by jszymborski »

kjksf wrote: post #134
jszymborski wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This $5 billion investment feels more like the result of back-channel discussions with the US government where they "politely" ask NVIDIA to help out Intel in exchange for less restrictions selling chips to China. Stinks of Mussolini-style Corporatism to me.

You try to pin this (hypothetical) as fascism. Let's assume Trump admin pressured Nvidia to invest in intel. Chips act (voted by Democrats / Biden) gave Intel up to $7.8 billion of YOUR money (taxes) in form of direct grants. Was it more of "Mussolini-style corporatism" to you or not?

There's big difference between government allocating tax payer dollars by passing a bill than a president using their influence to force dealings between corporate entities that benefit the ruling party.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#152

Post by philistine »

jszymborski wrote: post #108
jasode wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was down in the dumps? This is giving similar vibes. Doesn't feel the same because the 1997 investment was arranged by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. He had a long personal relationship with Bill Gates so could just call him to drop the outstanding lawsuits and get a commitment for future Office versions on the Mac. Basically, Steve Jobs at relatively young age of 4…

> This $5 billion investment feels more like the result of back-channel discussions with the US government where they "politely" ask NVIDIA to help out Intel in exchange for less restrictions selling chips to China. Stinks of Mussolini-style Corporatism to me.

Yeah, the thing about the economy is it's too big for one mind to grasp, you need statistics to make sense of it in aggregate.

If you fiddle and concentrate only on the top performers, the bottom falls out. Most of the US economy is still in small companies.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#153

Post by jonbiggums22 »

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…

Way back in the mid-late 2000s Intel CPUs could be used with third party chipsets not manufactured by Intel. This had been going on forever but the space was particularly wild with Nvidia being the most popular chipset manufacturer for AMD and also making in-roads for Intel CPUs. It was an important enough market than when ALi introduced AMD chipsets that were better than Nvidia's they promptly bought the company and spun down operations.

This was all for naught as AMD purchased ATi, shutting out all other chipsets and Intel did the same. Things actually looked pretty grim for Nvidia at this point in time. AMD was making moves that suggested APUs were the future and Intel started releasing platforms with very little PCIe connectivity, prompting Nvidia to build things like the Ion platform that could operate over an anemic pcie 1x link. There were really were the beginnings of strategic moves to lock Nvidia out of their own market.

Fortunately, Nvidia won a lawsuit against Intel that required them to have pcie 16x connectivity on their main platforms for 10 years or so and AMD put out non-competitive offerings in the CPU space such that the APU take off never happened. If Intel had actually developed their integrated GPUs or won that lawsuit or if AMD had actually executed Nvidia might well be an also-ran right around now.

To their credit, Nvidia really took advantage of their competitors inability to press their huge strategic advantage during that time. I think we're in a different landscape at the moment. Neither AMD nor Intel can afford boot Nvidia since consumers would likely abandon them for whoever could still slot in an Nvidia card. High performance graphics is the domain of add-in boards now and will be for awhile. Process node shrinks aren't as easy and cooling solutions are getting crazy.

But Nvidia has been shut out of the new handheld market and haven't been a good total package for consoles as SoC both rule the day in those spaces so I'm not super surprised at the desire for this pairing. But I did think nvidia had given up these ambitions was planning to try to build an adjacent ARM based platform as a potential escape hatch.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#154

Post by Workaccount2 »

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)

It probably kills any prospect of Intel releasing a market disrupter card that many were calling for - a 64GB or 92GB card with even middling performance for under $1k.

It's pretty clear AMD and Nvidia are gatekeeping memory so they can iterate over time and protect their datacenter cards.

Intel had a prime opportunity to blow this up.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#155

Post by juancn »

AMD is much stronger in unified memory architectures than Nvidia at this point. It kinda makes sense, with the AI push.

I wonder what this means for the ARC line of GPUs?

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#156

Post by __turbobrew__ »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #62
qzw wrote: post #31

Remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was down in the dumps? This is giving similar vibes. That deal was arguably what saved Apple near its nadir. I’m not a fan of Intel’s past monopolistic practices, but for the sake of sustaining competition in the CPU/GPU market, I hope this deal works out for them even half as well as the MS deal did for Apple.

All they need now is a CEO like Steve Jobs…

Jensen moves to intel …

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#157

Post by jonbiggums22 »

joz1-k wrote: post #96
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…

RIP Arc and Gaudi. There is no other way how to read this. Fewer competitors => higher prices.

I think it is bad news for the GPU market (AMD has had a beachhead with their integrated solution here as they've lost out elsewhere) but good for x86 which I've worried would be greatly diminished as Intel became less competitive.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#158

Post by philistine »

mschuster91 wrote: post #97
fidotron wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what they've completely resisted so far is any non trivial modification. They turned down Acorn about the 286, which led to Acorn creating the Arm, they have turned down various console makers, they turned down Apple on the iPhone, and so on. In all cases they thought the opportunities were beneath them. Intel has always been too much about what they want to sell you, not what you need. That worked for them when…

> they have turned down various console makers The problem is, console manufacturers know precisely how much of their product they anticipate to sell, and it's usually a lot . The PlayStation 5 is 80 million units so far. And at that scale, the console manufacturers want to squeeze every vendor as hard as they can... and Intel didn't see the need to engage in a bidding war with AMD that would have given them a sizabl…

Apple did not want their x86 chips, they wanted their Xscale stuff. Apple went to Intel to get chips, the power envelope was appealing to Apple. Intel was the one to say no.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#159

Post by adrian_b »

mschuster91 wrote: post #99
imiric wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't be serious. Intel was well on its way to be a considerable threat to NVIDIA with their Arc line of GPUs, which are getting better and cheaper with each generation. Perhaps not in the enterprise and AI markets yet, but certainly on the consumer side. This news muddies this approach, and I see it as a misstep for both Intel and for consumers. Intel is only helping NVIDIA, which puts them further away from uns…

> This news muddies this approach, and I see it as a misstep for both Intel and for consumers. Consumers still have AMD as an alternative for very decent and price attractive GPUs (and CPUs).

Not everybody wants GPUs for games or for AI.

AMD has always followed closely NVIDIA in crippling their cheap GPUs for any other applications.

After many years of continuously decreasing performance of the "consumer" GPUs, only Intel has offered in the Battlemage GPUs FP64 performance comparable with what could be easily obtained 10 years ago, but no longer today.

Therefore, if the Intel GPUs disappear, then the choices in GPUs will certainly become much more restricted than today. AMD has almost never attempted to compete with NVIDIA in features, but whenever NVIDIA dropped some feature, so did AMD.

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