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Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

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Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#201

This is a death blow to the Intel GPU+AI efforts and should not be allowed by the regulators. It is clear that Intel needs the downstream, low-cost GPU market segment to have a portfolio of AI chips based on chiplets, where most defective ones end up in the consumer grade GPUs based on manufacturing yield. NVidias interest is now for Intel not to enter either the GPU market, nor the AI market - which Intel was prepar…

Consumer gpus are totally different products from the high end gpus now. Intel has failed on the gpu market and has effectively zero market share, so it is not actually clear there is an antitrust issue in that market. It would be nice if there was more competition but there are other players like AMD and a long tail of smaller ones

> it is not actually clear there is an antitrust issue in that market

Preempting a (potential) future competitor from entering a market is also an antitrust issue.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#202

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…

Console makers only get trivial modifications. ASRock sold a cryptocurrency miner, the BC-250, with the PS5 APU, and it works just like any of their other APUs, albeit with limited driver support.

The BC250 does not use a PS5 APU, it uses another APU which has the same CPU core. By that measure the Cell in the PS3 and the Xenon of the XBox 360 were the same, or any AMD Jaguar device is a PS4.

This relates to the Intel problem because they see the world the way you just described, and completely failed to grasp the importance of SoC development where you are suddenly free to consider the world without the preexisting buses and peripherals of the PC universe and to imagine something better. CPU cores are a means to an end, and represent an ever shrinking part of modern systems.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Right. But of course, intel was busy spinning off their Xscale business to Marvell. If they had seriously invested in it, they could have owned the coming mobile revolution.

They did push hard on their UMPC x86 SoCs (Paulsbo and derivatives) to Sony, Nokia, etc. These were never competitive on heat or battery life.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#204
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer gpus are totally different products from the high end gpus now. Intel has failed on the gpu market and has effectively zero market share, so it is not actually clear there is an antitrust issue in that market. It would be nice if there was more competition but there are other players like AMD and a long tail of smaller ones

>Consumer gpus are totally different products from the high end gpus now. Intel has failed on the gpu market and has effectively zero market share, so it is not actually clear there is an antitrust issue in that market. It would be nice if there was more competition but there are other players like AMD and a long tail of smaller ones I'm sorry that's just not correct. Intel is literally just getting started in the GP…

  224 GB/s

  128 bit 
The monkey's paw curls...

I love GPU differentiation, but this is one of those areas where Nvidia is justified shipping less VRAM. With less VRAM, you can use fewer memory controllers to push higher speeds on the same memory!

For instance, both the B50 and the RTX 2060 use GDDR6 memory. But the 2060 has a 192-bit memory bus, and enjoys ~336 GB/s bandwidth because of it.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#205

This is a death blow to the Intel GPU+AI efforts and should not be allowed by the regulators. It is clear that Intel needs the downstream, low-cost GPU market segment to have a portfolio of AI chips based on chiplets, where most defective ones end up in the consumer grade GPUs based on manufacturing yield. NVidias interest is now for Intel not to enter either the GPU market, nor the AI market - which Intel was prepar…

The likelihood intel AI was going to catch up with efforts like AWS Trainium, let alone Nvidia was already vanishingly small. This gives intel a chance at maintaining leading edge fab technologies.

I feel bad for gamers - I’ve been considering buying a B580 - but honestly the consumer welfare of that market is a complete sidenote.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#206
A weird kind of full-circle moment: Intel used to laugh off Nvidia, then tried Kaby Lake-G with AMD (RIP), and now they're handing over CPU real estate to the company that wiped the floor with their own GPU efforts

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#207
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Consumer gpus are totally different products from the high end gpus now. Intel has failed on the gpu market and has effectively zero market share, so it is not actually clear there is an antitrust issue in that market. It would be nice if there was more competition but there are other players like AMD and a long tail of smaller ones I'm sorry that's just not correct. Intel is literally just getting started in the GP…

224 GB/s 128 bit The monkey's paw curls... I love GPU differentiation, but this is one of those areas where Nvidia is justified shipping less VRAM. With less VRAM, you can use fewer memory controllers to push higher speeds on the same memory! For instance, both the B50 and the RTX 2060 use GDDR6 memory. But the 2060 has a 192-bit memory bus, and enjoys ~336 GB/s bandwidth because of it.

Tell me again, how fast can you move data from system ram to vram?

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#208

No way this doesn't get blocked by antitrust. This will make them way too large and Intel is already trying to sell off (US govt bought $10B couple weeks ago)

The government is the one pushing this deal. They won't block it.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#209
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…

Stick some CUDA cores on the CPU and market is for AI?
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