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Yeah that was so stupid of them to not see into the future and predict AI.

by NotYourLawyer 2y ago

Cumpiler69 2y ago
You don't need the AI boom. Gaming GPUs were already a decent money maker, then add the GPGPU boom.
- rob74 2y ago
  Yes, gaming GPUs are a decent money maker - but Intel GPUs can currently only compete in the midrange segment, where there is a lot less money to be made. And to change that, they need to invest a lot more money (with uncertain outcome). And for AI it's basically the same story - with the added difficulty of Nvidias CUDA moat, which even AMD is having trouble with.
lesuorac 2y ago
I'm not sure you needed to predict AI. GPUs exist because CPUs just aren't fast enough. Whether or not people are going to start making GPU-only computers is debatable (although there has clearly been a lot of CPU+GPU single chips).
- kllrnohj 2y ago
  What a frankly weird oversimplification? GPUs don't exist because CPUs aren't fast enough. GPUs exist because CPUs aren't parallel enough. And to achieve that parallelism, they sacrifice massive amounts of performance to get it. A GPU-only computer would be absolutely horrendous to use. It'd be incredibly slow and unresponsive as GPUs just absolutely suck at running single-threaded code or branchy code.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    I mean you can splits hairs about the difference between CPU and GPUs all you want. The overall point is that work is being increasingly done _not_ on the CPU. If your business is CPUs-only then you're going to have rough times as the world moves away from a CPU-centric world. You don't need to predict AI; you just need to see that alternatives are being looked at by competitors and you'll lose an edge if you don't also look at them. It's not going to matter much if you have a crappy CPU if most of the work is done on the GPU. Its like how iPhones don't advertise themselves as surround sound; phones aren't about calling people anymore so no reason to advertise legacy features.
    - kllrnohj 2y ago
      > The overall point is that work is being increasingly done _not_ on the CPU. Eh? GPGPU has been a thing for decades and yet barely made a dent in the demand for CPUs. Heck, CUDA is 17 years old! The world has not budged from being CPU-centric and it isn't showing any signs of doing so. GPUs remain an accelerator for specialized workloads and are going to continue to be just that.
      - astrange 2y ago
        Hmm, this isn't power-efficient thinking. iPhones have lots of accelerators beyond GPUs - not because they're more performant but because they're better at performance/power. Of course they also add GPU-like things to the CPU too for the same reason: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/109246/0100/SME-Overview/SME-and-SME2 https://developer.arm.com/documentation/109246/0100/SME-Over...
        kllrnohj 2y ago
        That's orthogonal. Fixed-function hardware has a power efficiency advantage over programmable hardware. This isn't new or surprising, but it's also unrelated to CPU vs. GPU. Both CPU & GPU are programmable, so that's not relevant.
        astrange 2y ago
        Those aren't useful distinctions. You might as well say the ALUs in a CPU aren't programmable because they aren't the instruction decoders.
        kllrnohj 2y ago
        Huh? Weren't you referring to things like the video decoding blocks? Those are genuinely fixed-function things, they have no aspects of programmability to them. It's why their capabilities are fixed for all time (eg, AV1 support requires a hardware change). It's like a pre-shader GPU. It's a very useful distinction to make.

Yeah that was so stupid of them to not see into the future and predict AI.

Cumpiler69 2y ago

You don't need the AI boom. Gaming GPUs were already a decent money maker, then add the GPGPU boom.

rob74 2y ago
Yes, gaming GPUs are a decent money maker - but Intel GPUs can currently only compete in the midrange segment, where there is a lot less money to be made. And to change that, they need to invest a lot more money (with uncertain outcome). And for AI it's basically the same story - with the added difficulty of Nvidias CUDA moat, which even AMD is having trouble with.

lesuorac 2y ago

I'm not sure you needed to predict AI. GPUs exist because CPUs just aren't fast enough. Whether or not people are going to start making GPU-only computers is debatable (although there has clearly been a lot of CPU+GPU single chips).

kllrnohj 2y ago
What a frankly weird oversimplification? GPUs don't exist because CPUs aren't fast enough. GPUs exist because CPUs aren't parallel enough. And to achieve that parallelism, they sacrifice massive amounts of performance to get it. A GPU-only computer would be absolutely horrendous to use. It'd be incredibly slow and unresponsive as GPUs just absolutely suck at running single-threaded code or branchy code.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  I mean you can splits hairs about the difference between CPU and GPUs all you want. The overall point is that work is being increasingly done _not_ on the CPU. If your business is CPUs-only then you're going to have rough times as the world moves away from a CPU-centric world. You don't need to predict AI; you just need to see that alternatives are being looked at by competitors and you'll lose an edge if you don't also look at them. It's not going to matter much if you have a crappy CPU if most of the work is done on the GPU. Its like how iPhones don't advertise themselves as surround sound; phones aren't about calling people anymore so no reason to advertise legacy features.
  - kllrnohj 2y ago
    > The overall point is that work is being increasingly done _not_ on the CPU. Eh? GPGPU has been a thing for decades and yet barely made a dent in the demand for CPUs. Heck, CUDA is 17 years old! The world has not budged from being CPU-centric and it isn't showing any signs of doing so. GPUs remain an accelerator for specialized workloads and are going to continue to be just that.
    - astrange 2y ago
      Hmm, this isn't power-efficient thinking. iPhones have lots of accelerators beyond GPUs - not because they're more performant but because they're better at performance/power. Of course they also add GPU-like things to the CPU too for the same reason: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/109246/0100/SME-Overview/SME-and-SME2 https://developer.arm.com/documentation/109246/0100/SME-Over...
      - kllrnohj 2y ago
        That's orthogonal. Fixed-function hardware has a power efficiency advantage over programmable hardware. This isn't new or surprising, but it's also unrelated to CPU vs. GPU. Both CPU & GPU are programmable, so that's not relevant.
        astrange 2y ago
        Those aren't useful distinctions. You might as well say the ALUs in a CPU aren't programmable because they aren't the instruction decoders.
        kllrnohj 2y ago
        Huh? Weren't you referring to things like the video decoding blocks? Those are genuinely fixed-function things, they have no aspects of programmability to them. It's why their capabilities are fixed for all time (eg, AV1 support requires a hardware change). It's like a pre-shader GPU. It's a very useful distinction to make.