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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

I am a little confused, I thought Intel had a big push the last couple of years to create its own GPU:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre...

The original article is here, and it unfortunately is just as confusing: https://www.reuters.com/business/intel-ceo-says-company-will...

Of course Intel has been designing and selling GPUs for years, I guess Lip-Bu means they're going to start manufacturing them as well? Or they're going to be data-center focused now?

Since he was touting that they recently hired a well-known GPU architect, it seems unlikely that this is merely about them using their own fabs for discrete GPUs instead of having integrated GPUs being the only ones they fab themselves. Some kind of shift in product strategy or reboot of their GPU architecture development seems more likely, if there's anything of substance underlying the news at all.

But this news is somehow even less comprehensible and believable than usual for Intel, whose announcements about their future plans have a tenuous connection to reality on a good day.

I think this is about them creating the silicon. AFAIK their GPU chips were produced by TSMC.

Even the gpus inside their cpus?

Intel has been using a fair bit of TSMC in their CPU manufacturing recently, yes. Most recently they’ve been assembling “tiles” of silicon from many process nodes into a single CPU package and IIRC they have been using TSMC for the GPU tiles.

This year's laptop chips use TSMC for the 12-core GPU parts but Intel 3 for the 4-core GPU parts.

I wasnt aware of that, thanks for correcting.

Intel Arc seems to be well liked, this seems to just be bad writing by Reuters. Unclear what is news here exactly as Demmers was hired a month ago…

Intel has been making GPUs since the late 90s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_process...

Intel has been making GPUs since the early 1980s, starting with the 82720, or the 82716 if you want to be picky and require a pure-Intel design. They announce a new GPU effort every few years, at about the time it's clear that the previous one has failed.

Again being picky, in theory their integrated graphics are a "success" in that they sell well, but that's because vendors get them for free with the CPU and so don't have to go through the expense of adding a discrete one.

I mean, they're a success in that even a weak discrete GPU is extremely overkill for the majority of people who just want to browse. You can only integrate that kind of card into another chip because the overhead of adding IO and another PCB is just too high for such a weak GPU.

Oh, absolutely, 99% of users and particularly business users don't need a gaming-grade GPU so the Intel one is fine.

Just for a laugh I once tried playing a 10-15 year old game on a recent Intel GPU. It was pretty dire, many seconds between frame updates. It took me several minutes just to get out of the game because it took so long to respond to keypresses.

1979 if you really want CRTs to be called GPU :)

https://bitsavers.org/components/intel/8275/1979_8275.pdf

Used on Intel made iSBX270 video board http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/intel/iSBC/143444-001_iSBX_270_... for use in Intel iSBX systems.

Agree, extremely poorly reported out across numerous outlets.

One can only assume the original Intel press release was just as confusing.

Their newsroom website has nothing more recent than Feb 2... I wonder where this came from.

They did but then it stopped and was scrapped (chief involved also left). So it's more like "re"-start than start.

Any official source? YouTubers have been saying that Intel is shuttering Arc at every minor setback for years.

TSMC makes Intel's GPUs

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