4 ms·

It's almost as if it's incredibly difficult to come out the gates with a competitive GPU.

by m00x 4y ago

29athrowaway 4y ago
They gave NVIDIA and ARM many years of advantage. Now they are battling for their lives.
bsder 4y ago
It's really not that "difficult" to come out with a competitive GPU. However, it is really expensive. Even worse, from Intel's point of view, that enormous expense is almost all in software--which must be maintained for an extended amount of time and looks like a pure expense that will never be recouped. Even AMD is struggling with this. If Intel wanted to win this space, they needed to embed a bunch of staff in every major gaming company to make sure their engine runs well on the card. If Intel really wanted to displace Nvidia, they needed to completely open the specs and fund every single academic ML/AI/Graphic research team for the next 10 years if they used Intel cards.
- worrycue 4y ago
  IMHO the real target is the enterprise market - and no one really cares about the gaming market anymore; look at Nvidia and AMD, both pretty much gave the middle finger to gamers with their high prices. The cynic in me feel that Intel is targeting the gaming market now because they have no shot in the enterprise world and they need _someone_ to fund their GPU development. Still it’s welcomed competition. Enjoy it while it last I guess.
  - touisteur 4y ago
    They'd maybe have a shot if they'd delivered anything in the enterprise market. Some of us are desperate to get a decent alternative to NVIDIA (AMD software story is... not there, but at least you can find some MI100 or MI250 gear if you're lucky) and Intel keeps not delivering the enterprise GPUs we're begging them for. Not even asking for a A100/H100 level thing now, but please break the A40 30-TFLOPS-and-lower-market (I even don't mind putting two 'max' 1100 for one A40...). Just start selling some gear to benchmark and port stuff to sycl dammit. No big OEM (HPE, Dell, Lenovo) has any to put in their servers (or at least they're not selling them to me) and why make it so hard. Either Intel doesn't remember how to sell server gear or they can't deliver anything but supercomputer stuff and EVEN THERE it's still spotty it seems.
    - simfree 4y ago
      AMD's software stack is usable if your willing to run a buggy distro like Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. You know it's buggy when the Ubuntu installer gets on the network just fine, but it misnames the Ethernet interface and chokes on the WiFi drivers firmware. Meanwhile Debian 10 and 11 just work on the same hardware with zero futzing or debugging m
      - touisteur 4y ago
        Which is good for benchmarking, good for AMD (and interesting to hear, thanks) but doesn't bode well for production use. But AT LEAST you can buy some gear and get some dev mindshare and perf numbers.

It's almost as if it's incredibly difficult to come out the gates with a competitive GPU.

by m00x 4y ago

It's almost as if it's incredibly difficult to come out the gates with a competitive GPU.

29athrowaway 4y ago

They gave NVIDIA and ARM many years of advantage. Now they are battling for their lives.

bsder 4y ago

It's really not that "difficult" to come out with a competitive GPU. However, it is really expensive. Even worse, from Intel's point of view, that enormous expense is almost all in software--which must be maintained for an extended amount of time and looks like a pure expense that will never be recouped. Even AMD is struggling with this. If Intel wanted to win this space, they needed to embed a bunch of staff in every major gaming company to make sure their engine runs well on the card. If Intel really wanted to displace Nvidia, they needed to completely open the specs and fund every single academic ML/AI/Graphic research team for the next 10 years if they used Intel cards.

worrycue 4y ago
IMHO the real target is the enterprise market - and no one really cares about the gaming market anymore; look at Nvidia and AMD, both pretty much gave the middle finger to gamers with their high prices. The cynic in me feel that Intel is targeting the gaming market now because they have no shot in the enterprise world and they need _someone_ to fund their GPU development. Still it’s welcomed competition. Enjoy it while it last I guess.
- touisteur 4y ago
  They'd maybe have a shot if they'd delivered anything in the enterprise market. Some of us are desperate to get a decent alternative to NVIDIA (AMD software story is... not there, but at least you can find some MI100 or MI250 gear if you're lucky) and Intel keeps not delivering the enterprise GPUs we're begging them for. Not even asking for a A100/H100 level thing now, but please break the A40 30-TFLOPS-and-lower-market (I even don't mind putting two 'max' 1100 for one A40...). Just start selling some gear to benchmark and port stuff to sycl dammit. No big OEM (HPE, Dell, Lenovo) has any to put in their servers (or at least they're not selling them to me) and why make it so hard. Either Intel doesn't remember how to sell server gear or they can't deliver anything but supercomputer stuff and EVEN THERE it's still spotty it seems.
  - simfree 4y ago
    AMD's software stack is usable if your willing to run a buggy distro like Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. You know it's buggy when the Ubuntu installer gets on the network just fine, but it misnames the Ethernet interface and chokes on the WiFi drivers firmware. Meanwhile Debian 10 and 11 just work on the same hardware with zero futzing or debugging m
    - touisteur 4y ago
      Which is good for benchmarking, good for AMD (and interesting to hear, thanks) but doesn't bode well for production use. But AT LEAST you can buy some gear and get some dev mindshare and perf numbers.