Intel does these "throw spaghetti on the wall" kind of investments into potientially interesting companies/technologies all of the time - and have done so for decades.
Every time the recipient hypes the shit out of it, of course.
Every time the recipient hypes the shit out of it, of course.
As far as I can tell, Intel more-or-less pioneered the idea of SSDs being the best storage rather than the cheap storage, for instance. The X25-M and X25-E were absurdly good. Then, once the market was established...they pulled out of it.
Popular science kind of backgrounder (can't vouch for the accuracy/relevancy - details are very scarce): https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/digital-logic/polymer-memory/
Not that releasing the GPU would be something super innovative, they already have the B70.
This makes perfect sense given that Intel's target margins are pretty high. They only want to sell advanced tech, not commodities. Once SSDs became commoditized Intel was out.
They knew it wouldn't be profitable enough long term, but it would increase demand for their products.
I think what's semi-unfortunate is all the swings and misses, especially the cases where it wasn't necessarily a bad idea but Intel gives up too soon;
- Massively parallel simple-ish x86 cores a-la Xeon Phi; okay maybe not the best idea on the surface but I feel like nowadays the opportunities could be more forthcoming with how to reuse parts of that tech (And maybe they do but are just quiet about it... i.e. GPU acceleration)
- Optane. I think the tech would have been cheaper if they made terms for licensing easier, but maybe I'm missing part of the equation...
- This thing where they keep half assing the GPU strategy; Imagine if B70 launched last year alongside the B60 and B50, before DRAM prices went sideways. Or if they didn't take so long to release a >16GB GPU in the first place; that would have built a lot of interest, but instead they finally release a 32GB GPU alongside more bad news for the overall roadmap. The whole situation instead becomes a jarring rollercoaster that makes everyone worry that Intel is gonna kill the project the way everything but CPUs gets killed lately.