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The revolution here is not that it is as good as the competition, but that it might have a much better price, leading to a much better price/performance ratio.
by DeathArrow 3y ago
The revolution here is not that it is as good as the competition, but that it might have a much better price, leading to a much better price/performance ratio.
If Intel is patient to compete for lower grade GPUs for a few years without killing its GPU line, then we might see them competing for the top in the future. And the top is where the big money is. They'll also need a CUDA compatible API to stand a chance, but they have time.
The only thing that saved Intel until now is that Nvidia can't legally produce x86 CPUs, although they tried.
The more competition, the better.
- debaserab2 3y agoWhy can't nvidia legally produce x86 chips?
- Teever 3y agoBecause you need a license to do so and Intel and AMD are loathe to give a license to would-be competitors. I believe that the person you're replying to is referring to an attempt to produce x86 compatible processors that Nvidia undertook when they bought the license that Via owned. IIRC that didn't go so well for Nvidia because the license didn't include new parts of the instruction set like the 64 bit instructions that AMD made in the mid 2000s and AMD wouldn't license them.
- DeathArrow 3y agoI do believe they've tried to circumvent the IP by implementing a translation layer like in Transmeta Crusoe, but Intel still threatened them with lawsuits.
- papercrane 3y agoNvidia can't do a translation layer. Back around 2010 Intel and Nvidia were suing each other, the settlement agreement specifically said Nvidia wouldn't produce anything like that
- ekianjo 3y agoBecause you need a license and very few companies have one.
- lordnacho 3y agoIP laws strike again. This is like saying someone can't make Lego compatible plastic bricks, or a Torx wrench. Seem unreasonable to me. Even without a legal protection there is some degree of protection for the original creator something as complicated as a CPU.
- magnat 3y agoCan Intel refuse to sell such license to nVidia or ask for much higher fees than other companies? If nVidia bought one of those companies, would that allow them to produce x86 chips at will?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- shrewduser 3y agothe license doesn't transfer if the company is bought.
- Dah00n 3y agoAs far as I can remember they would have to buy AMD, VIA or IBM to get a X86 licence. That's just the beginning though as many later patents are also important, but they would likely also be already licensed by these companies (like AMD64 for one). If they could even use the license after a take over.... I don't know.
- als0 3y agoIf AMD got taken over, then they would automatically lose their x86 license, as I believe it is a condition in their cross-licensing agreement. This is why I don't expect AMD to get bought in the near future.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ZiiS 3y agoThis is a redherring; Amazon and Apple are happier on ARM. Nvidia may have been blocked from buying them outright but are free to still make them.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoNvidia has produced arm cpus, eg for the Nintendo switch.
- stevefan1999 3y agoAnd Jetson
- ZiiS 3y agoThat is what I am saying; Nvidia don't need or want an x86 license. Thier best move is to dedicate all posible manufacturing to AI but a fallback stratagy might be to outcompete Intel in CPU. (They tried to buy Arm a year or so ago but it was stopped by the FTC.)
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoThe problem with arm is that it is lacking in software support and optimizations compared to x86; it's only recently that there's proof of viability of arm cpus outside mobile through apple, and they also have the advantage of full stack integration and over a decade of experience building the best performing ARM cpus. So there's a reason why they'd prefer x86. Hopefully they manage to release an ARM competitor for the desktop market, though with AI boom, it seems more likely that it will be a server focused on supporting their GPU lineup.
- ZiiS 3y agoI think the tipping point was a few years ago. The are simply more Phones/tables/tvs/cars then the have ever been desktop PCs. They tend to be more latency sensitive and resource constrained. Therefor it is unsurprising that more optimization work has been invested in ARM then x86. Graviton's certainly work out better for every program I have tried on AWS (obviously this is mainly because AWS set the price to ensure they do). I mean the are complex x86 programs that run just as fast for longer on battery on a M1 then a comparable Dell/Lenovo.
- 0xakhil 3y agoApart from the software stack, Nvidia has invested a lot in the networking infrastructure for high bandwidth between gpu in a cluster. I think their acquisition of Mellanox might have helped here. So competing on server grade gpu might be more difficult for intel.
- willis936 3y agoThe same intel that has been closely involved with ieee 802.3 development for decades and has had cutting edge NICs for datacenters ready to go in advance of new clause ratification? I'm sure they'll be fine.
- emadm 3y agoIntel Gaudi2 is actually really good, better than A100s and cheaper (including interconnect, 2.15 Tb/s) CUDA isn't that important any more. The weird one was that Aurora at 2 exaflops using.. Intel Max?
- irdc 3y ago> And the top is where the big money is. But the bottom is where volume and profits are. If the PC market has shown us anything, it’s that only producing for the top of the market gets you outcompeted.
- ffhhttt 3y agoI guess the top in the case might be the datacenter and stuff like A/H100 which have totally obscene margins compared to any consumer grade GPUs
- irdc 3y agoSure. But it’s a lot easier to pay back your investment in product development if you can amortise it over 50.000.000 GPUs instead of 50.000 GPUs. Same for ironing out the bugs in your software. Getting paid a small yearly salary for every one of your products may look really nice but the size of the market makes it a precarious business.
- ZiiS 3y agoNvidia never needs to make a GPU again.
- jki275 3y agoI wouldn't call that the top, that's an entirely different market.
- Sakos 3y agoDatacenter is considered a separate segment from gaming GPUs. So is automotive or AI.
- weinzierl 3y agoApple produced for the top and IBM for the masses. Look where both companies are today.
- mschuster91 3y agoApple certainly didn't produce for the top. The Mac Pro always was a niche product for media people.
- sameerds 3y agoDid you forget a "/s" tag? Because that pretty much sounds like ten years of AMD history!
- iforgotpassword 3y agoIntel can afford to throw much more money at the problem. AMD can't even get their drivers straight for years now, apart from the gaming use case. I really see a chance for Intel.
- lockhouse 3y agoUnless things have improved recently, Intel‘s graphics drivers are not that great on Windows. I really wish someone would give Nvidia some effective competition, but I just don’t see that being Intel.
- ls612 3y agoTheir drivers have improved enough that for the old OpenGL/DX9 games they are emulating it's able to just brute force it's way to acceptable performance since those games are really old usually.
- pjmlp 3y agoNot sure if this has ever improved, back in the day Intel drivers were known to lie about their OpenGL capabilities, stating supported, when the feature was actually emulated in software.
- Someone 3y agoIf they only say their driver supports the feature, that technically is not lying, is it? And what do you expect the driver to say instead? Also, for graphics cards, I expect every feature requires some work from the driver. It’s not as if OpenGL is a hardware interface.
- 3y ago
- als0 3y ago> Nvidia can't legally produce x86 CPUs, although they tried What did they try? And when?
- monocasa 3y agoWhat became Denver CPUs were originally targeting x86.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zamalek 3y ago> They'll also need a CUDA compatible API to stand a chance, but they have time. Arc already has an extremely good value proposition: hardware AV1 encoding - so you can keep your existing GPU (let's face it: it's probably still more than fine) and augment it with a cheap Arc.
- washadjeffmad 3y agoMy A770 16GB originally intended for OpenVINO and OneAPI was repurposed into a workstation dedicated to AV1/VP9 encoding. Slow developments are fine with me; it's a beautiful card.
- mindcrime 3y agoThey'll also need a CUDA compatible API to stand a chance, but they have time. I guess CUDA compatible would be fine, but for myself, I'd buy their cards for compute workloads as long as they have some reasonable API regardless of whether it's CUDA or not. If they have something usable based on OpenCL, SYCL, whatever, they would have a shot at getting my money. Ideally that would also include then providing some support to make sure there are usable backends for PyTorch, Tensorflow, etc. Ah well. Let's see if they can figure this out. Between Intel and AMD, you'd think somebody could step forward and give NVIDIA some serious competition.
- ColonelPhantom 3y agoIntel already has a working GPGPU stack, using oneAPI/SYCL. They also have arguably pretty good OpenCL support, as well as downstream support for PyTorch and Tensorflow using their custom extensions https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-tensorflow https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-tensorflow and https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch https://github.com/intel/intel-extension-for-pytorch which are actively developed and just recently brought up-to-date with upstream releases.
- Aerroon 3y agoI hope Intel keeps throwing more VRAM at their top cards than the competition. With the way current AI works that VRAM alone could make them attractive to try to develop for in the consumer/hobbyist space.