Raja Koduri joins Intel to spearhead graphics products

[HEXUS]

Will lead new Core and Visual Computing Group to develop integrated and discrete graphics.

Read more.

[deepblue08]

AMD must be <mod edit> bricks.

[decends]

AMD must be <mod edit> bricks.

Can you imagine the horror if AMD sold off its GPU department to intel and CPU department to nvidia? A full on war between nvidia and intel......

[DanceswithUnix]

A full on war between nvidia and intel......

You think Intel destroying Nvidia's chipset business whilst denying them the ability to so much as emulate x86 in software wasn't enough? People really liked the old Nvidia Ion for Atom boards, clearly Intel had to put a stop to that too so they crippled Atom specifically so Nvidia couldn't add graphics to it. Really, it can't get any dirtier than it already is between those two so if Intel is now going after Nvidia's core markets but this time with someone who might actually be able to pull it off then things are going to get interesting.

Note also that the last legal agreement between Intel and Nvidia was signed in 2011 and lasted for 6 years, so the cease fire may be considered off.

[spacein_vader]

Can you imagine the horror if AMD sold off its GPU department to intel and CPU department to nvidia? A full on war between nvidia and intel......

They can't. AMDs x86 licence has clauses in around it not being transferable if AMD sells out to a non US company. Unless NV is willing to completely restructure into the US they can't buy the Cpu side.

[lumireleon]

so intel HD graphics is slowly dying away? Some geeks have been claiming intel HD graphics of the Skylake to the current era are more efficient than a similar performance tier offered by AMD or Nvidia in the 14nm process, is this claim true?

[DanceswithUnix]

They can't. AMDs x86 licence has clauses in around it not being transferable if AMD sells out to a non US company.

I think it is if they sell to *any* company. The license is just not transferable. That isn't a deal breaker though, Nvidia could buy AMD and run it as an independent subsidiary or they could merge the companies keeping the AMD name making Nvidia graphics cards as an AMD brand which would seem odd for a week or so then people would just accept it.

I don't see it happening though. Nvidia have Denver and right now ARM is probably more valuable than x86.

[SylvanSagacious]

Raja is a big name (though to be fair, I only came across him recently due to AMD's PR campaigns). This will be considered by some a big loss to AMD and specifically the RTG (I wonder if AMD will relaunch the ATi brand, it would make things so much easier). I guess you could say he was the Jim Keller of RTF.

I'm no so sure I'd go that far, but maybe it's fair. Maybe he got tired of the constant uphill battle and being weighed down by AMD's lack of money and infrastructure to do really cool next level things.


Two or three years ago, people were expecting AMD to declare bankruptcy with their line riding of the Altman Z-score, yet they stuck around to lunch two separate, market invigorating, products. How much of this success is down to individuals like Keller and Raja? Does the media/PR dept's place too much emphasis on their involvement? Are they as critical as it seemed? Is AMD <mod edit>?.....up toilet creek?

The Intel/AMD deal really caught me by surprise. I suspect Intel will have this new graphics team working to resolve the necessity for AMD's involvement and dump that contract ASAP.

Also, when Keller left for that fancy Tesla group he said he left a top quality management structure in place. Raja took a Leave of Absence and the AMD boss is doing his job in the short term. I wonder how long he/AMD knew he was going to Intel and if the LoA was just to give them time to buffer his absence from hurting their stock value.

I speculated that Vega's apparent focus on Big Data and mining was an attempt to break into those markets and carve a foothold, but doing so on a desktop gpu was attempting too much with one product. Despite all the positive spin, sales just aren't what they need to be and I think AMD look to be circling the toilet.



I haven't had much sleep so I could just as well be reading way too much into this. Also, if they do go bust, maybe Samsung could buy them, that'd give Intel something to chew on.

[scaryjim]

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[spolsh]

Pah ! And I thought <mod edit> was a hip new swear !

[azrael-]

I can't help but wonder if this bit from Raja's internal memo will still hold true:

I will continue to be an ardent fan and user of AMD technologies for both personal and professional use.

But then again, what does "AMD technologies" actually cover? Will Raja insist on only using computers with Radeon graphics? Or could it even be defined as vaguely as AMD64? That would hold true for all current Intel processors, even though Intel insists on labeling it differently.

[outwar6010]

I heard that this was more about deep learning and ai, than graphics per say.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Jim Keller when he joined Tesla,not only hired some ex-AMD people,but it apparently lead to this:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/tesl...-with-amd.html

AMD collaborating with Tesla on making a new chip. This probably indicates its more likely Intel will work closer with AMD,not only in licensing IP,but developing some aspects of the physical GPU development.

After all if Intel already had a decent uarch already they wouldn't be using a custom AMD chip for their high end laptop chip,so it looks like a different direction to what they were doing before.

If anything,as the chap over at HardOCP said,Intel has let go of a lot of its graphics related engineers.

So that indicates to me,they intend to either:
1.)License and use AMD base technology to implement their GPUs. AMD developes the base uarch and Intel implements their own chips based on it different to AMD.
2.)Intel buys RTG so gets all the engineers and IP.
3.)Intel buys part of RTG and shares in R and D costs.
4.)AMD developes the graphics parts of Intel CPUs.
5.)Intel developes their own base technlogy and design.

The last one has not worked as well as they probably expected,hence why the sudden change it seems.

[azrael-]

Jim Keller when he joined Tesla,not only hired some ex-AMD people,but it apparently lead to this:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/tesl...-with-amd.html

AMD collaborating with Tesla on making a new chip. This probably indicates its more likely Intel will work closer with AMD,not only in licensing IP,but developing some aspects of the physical GPU development.

After all if Intel already had a decent uarch already they wouldn't be using a custom AMD chip for their high end laptop chip,so it looks like a different direction to what they were doing before.

If anything,as the chap over at HardOCP said,Intel has let go of a lot of its graphics related engineers.

So that indicates to me,they intend to either:
1.)License and use AMD base technology to implement their GPUs. AMD developes the base uarch and Intel implements their own chips based on it different to AMD.
2.)Intel buys RTG so gets all the engineers and IP.
3.)Intel buys part of RTG and shares in R and D costs.
4.)AMD developes the graphics parts of Intel CPUs.
5.)Intel developes their own base technlogy and design.

The last one has not worked as well as they probably expected,hence why the sudden change it seems.

I just had a serious deja vu moment ... until I realized you copied yesterday's comment from the other thread verbatim.

[Corky34]

I heard that this was more about deep learning and ai, than graphics per say.

From how Intel describe his newly created role it seems to cover everything from IoT, AI, integrated graphics, and discrete graphics too compute cards.

From the sounds of it they're looking to compete in the same market that Nvidia currently operates in, although where that leaves AMD IDK.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I just had a serious deja vu moment ... until I realized you copied yesterday's comment from the other thread verbatim.

Yes,I did - easier to copy and paste it on the phone. However,I noticed something when a mate showed me this tweet from Raja Koduri's new twitter account:

https://twitter.com/Rajaontheedge/st...27350743588864

It will be a massive understatement to say that I am beyond excited about my new role at Intel. I haven't yet seen anything written that groks the magnitude of what I am pursuing. The scale of it is not even remotely close to what I was doing before. Will say more when ready!

Hmmmm..."groks" = easter egg? $AMD filed a trademark application for "Grok" last year, granted 2017-08-08 - https://trademarks.justia.com/871/15/grok-87115592.html … ....The plot thickens, as the computer HW nerd internet looses its mind...Hope it involves VR/AR/AI & a new metaverse.

https://trademarks.justia.com/871/15/grok-87115592.html

Hmm,AMD just filed a trademark for GROK just recently.

So late last year,Intel and AMD joined forces for this promo:

http://techreport.com/news/31088/amd...ware-and-games

Now,Intel uses a custom AMD graphics chip,and apparently according to rumours Intel reduced the size of its graphics division last year:

https://www.kitguru.net/components/g...-future-igpus/

Something is definitely up!!