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GPGPUs ended up becoming the AI/cloud accelerators that FPGAs promised to be back when Intel bought Altera.

FPGAs are not ideal for raw parallel number crunching like in AI/LLMs. They are more appropriate for predictable real-time/ultra-low-latency parallel things like the the modulation and demodulation of signals in 5G base state stations.

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FPGAs might not be ideal, but AMD's NPU IP originated with Xilinx.

Intel was an early player to so many massive industries (e.g. XScale, GPGPU, hybrid FPGA SoCs). Intel abandoned all of them prematurely and has been left playing catch-up every time. We might be having a very different discussion if literally any of them had succeeded.

XScale was forced on Intel as a penalty for anticompetitive activities against Digital. It’s no surprise then that they weren’t interested in doing anything with it.

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