Where Raja? What's He Going to be Doing?

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Yep, Raja is going to Intel to get Big Blue back into the high-end discrete GPU market. Holy crap. That is excellent news. The more competition the better. Below is the complete statement.



Intel to Expand Strategy to Deliver High-End, Discrete Graphics Solutions

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 8, 2017 – Intel today announced the appointment of Raja Koduri as Intel chief architect, senior vice president of the newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group, and general manager of a new initiative to drive edge computing solutions. In this position, Koduri will expand Intel’s leading position in integrated graphics for the PC market with high-end discrete graphics solutions for a broad range of computing segments.

Billions of users today enjoy computing experiences powered by Intel’s leading cores and visual computing IP. Going forward under Koduri’s leadership, the company will unify and expand differentiated IP across computing, graphics, media, imaging and machine intelligence capabilities for the client and data center segments, artificial intelligence, and emerging opportunities like edge computing.
“Raja is one of the most experienced, innovative and respected graphics and system architecture visionaries in the industry and the latest example of top technical talent to join Intel,” said Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, Intel’s chief engineering officer and group president of the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and System Architecture. “We have exciting plans to aggressively expand our computing and graphics capabilities and build on our very strong and broad differentiated IP foundation. With Raja at the helm of our Core and Visual Computing Group, we will add to our portfolio of unmatched capabilities, advance our strategy to lead in computing and graphics, and ultimately be the driving force of the data revolution.”

Koduri brings to Intel more than 25 years of experience in visual and accelerated computing advances across a broad range of platforms, including PCs, game consoles, professional workstations and consumer devices. His deep technical expertise spans graphics hardware, software and system architecture.

“I have admired Intel as a technology leader and have had fruitful collaborations with the company over the years,” Koduri said. “I am incredibly excited to join the Intel team and have the opportunity to drive a unified architecture vision across its world-leading IP portfolio that help’s accelerate the data revolution.”

Koduri, 49, joins Intel from AMD, where he most recently served as senior vice president and chief architect of the Radeon Technologies Group. In this role, he was responsible for overseeing all aspects of graphics technologies used in AMD’s APU, discrete GPU, semi-custom and GPU compute products. Prior to AMD, Koduri served as director of graphics architecture at Apple Inc., where he helped establish a leadership graphics sub-system for the Mac product family and led the transition to Retina computer displays.

Koduri will officially start in his new role at Intel in early December.
 
Chimpee said:
Wonder if this means AMD could still sale RTG to Intel?
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Why would amd do that? There is an enormous advantage to having a cpu/gpu to use in products for pcs. Nvidia can't get an x86 license so they have to go arm, and even there they got a win with the nintendo switch. If amd sold the gpu division, they could not utilize that in products aside from licensing.
 
The thing that is wild about all of this is that it appears that intel is seemingly just buying graphics chips from amd as a holdover for the short term until it can get its own chips developed. And then? This amd graphics chip deal seems incredibly temporal atm. Good for amd in the short term, but by no means a long term source of revenue.

AMD will HAVE to pump more money into r&d of the gpu division. The success of ryzen chips should help them for the moment, but this is not the time to slack off in those arenas.

They will seemingly have competition in discreet graphics from both nvidia, and eventually intel. They are having a hard enough time against just nvidia, this is dangerous for them, and relying on cpu alone is not enough.


nvidia next year will receive a blow in the short term to their gpu sales on notebooks. A lot of notebooks come with entry level graphics like the 940 and now mx150, those are basically out. And if that new integrated gpu part trades blows with a 1060 with vastly lower power, that is going to put massive pressure even on nvidias midrange options. I do not know what the percentage breakdown of nvidia parts of desktop vs notebook for gamers (not talking professional use), but I suspect the mobile market is huge for nvidia, and that will have a real shift to more of amd graphics.

That helps amd in the short term, but things are moving quickly, no one can stand still. Nvidia is seen as a cosmic threat from all sides and the alliances to take them on are extremely temporal at best. The moment intel has their own parts, amd will almost certainly be kicked to the curb... unless apple really wants the amd gpus.
 
oldmanbal said:
Seemed like it was going to be more about ai, deep learning, and scalable core architecture (ex cuda).
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It's definitely possible Raja will focus development into more compute heavy graphics cards for intel. In the short term that might be less of a threat for nvidia and amd in gaming, but a nightmare in those supposedly exploding AI markets.
 
I wonder how long it will take to see a functioning card?

My guess is 2 years.
 
Seemed completely obvious, at least when you consider when the news was released it coincided with the Intel AMD rumors.
 
AMD is in an even more difficult spot now:

Besides taking on NVIDIA though, this is going to put perpetual underdog AMD into a tough spot. AMD’s edge over Intel for the longest time has been their GPU technology. The Zen CPU core has thankfully reworked that balance in the last year, though AMD still hasn’t quite caught up to Intel here on peak performance. The concern here is that the mature PC market has strongly favored duopolies – AMD and Intel for CPUs, AMD and NVIDIA for GPUs – so Intel’s entrance into the discrete GPU space upsets the balance on the latter. And while AMD is without a doubt more experienced than Intel, Intel has the financial and fabrication resources to fight NVIDIA, something AMD has always lacked. Which isn’t to say that AMD is by any means doom, but Intel’s growing GPU efforts and Raja’s move to Intel has definitely made AMD’s job harder.
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https://www.anandtech.com/show/1201...ete-gpus-hires-raja-koduri-as-chief-architect
 
So how many cards and/or years will we have to wait before we get this golden egg we've been hearing about that Raja was gonna lay at AMD?

Polaris release = Raja didn't have control over this, wait for Vega!
Vega release = Raja didn't have control over this, wait for Navi!
*Pre-Navi release = Raja doesn't work there anymore, wait for Intel GPUs!

I mean I hope the best for him & Intel in this direction, but I got a bad case of the "Here we go again"s.
 
DeeFrag said:
Plot twist in 2020, Nvidia buys AMD.
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Hmm...this actually may make sense if AMD do not earn enough through Ryzen. But this could be very bad news for us all. Can you imagine a world where nVidia has all the IP for GPU's?
 
It will be years before they can release anything and I dont see how they are going to do it without getting a licensing agreement with either AMD or Nvidia. Last time Intel tried this they ended up with a product that went nowhere. Will be interesting tho to see if Intel can actually come up with something will care about.
 
let me start by saying that i am very hopeful. i want to see a 3rd contender in the GPU market. this is something we have not seen in over 15 years! would spark some great competition.

that being said....no matter how hard they try, intel has never made a good GPU especially not a high end one. oh sure, they've made some onboard ones that seems to do the trick for low end but those are a joke compared to even inexpensive offerings from nvidia or amd.

here's to hoping for the best, i just don't want to see amd get killed by intel on both fronts one day.
 
I really hope this means Intel is going to be developing desktop GPU's. We desperately need someone to bring Nvidia back to reality with how they price and gouge the market. Intel has the financial backings to do that.
 
Wonder if they might make a play for PowerVR tech from Canyon Bridge to accommodate this some.
 
Bah. According to Raja's statement about his sabbatical, he still has another month and a half of "me time". I call fake news!

;)
 
SighTurtle said:
More likely Raja leads a exodus from RTG to Intel.
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That is my worry. Of course it could backfire for Raja and/or the engineers. Once Intel gets as much info as they need from them they might dump them all like a bad habit. It would take a few years, but still, once you have the info you need, why keep them?
 
Meh. This dude isn't going to single handed fix Intel's sucky integrated graphics. And it seems unlikely Intel will want anything to do with making dedicated GPUs.

But hey, stir the pot, let's see what happens. I'd like to see a REAL 3rd party graphics competitor enter the scene. But it seems unlikely we're going to see a new 3dfx, rendition, etc at this point.
 
Burticus said:
Meh. This dude isn't going to single handed fix Intel's sucky integrated graphics. And it seems unlikely Intel will want anything to do with making dedicated GPUs.

But hey, stir the pot, let's see what happens. I'd like to see a REAL 3rd party graphics competitor enter the scene. But it seems unlikely we're going to see a new 3dfx, rendition, etc at this point.
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Intel's own press release very clearly stated that they want to do dedicated GPUs. The real question isn't whether or not they want to make GPUs, its whether or not they're going to bother entering the gaming realm. AMD and Nvidia have gaming pretty locked up, there isn't a ton of room for anyone else to slip in right now. However, there is a ton of room in AI and other fields. Non-gaming and non-general desktop fields are most likely where we will see them focus their efforts. Maybe cryptocurrency mining as well, if that is still a big thing a few years from now. I'd be surprised if they went heavy into PC gaming.
 
It is also entirely possible that in the not so distant future that Intel could decide to outright buy the AMD graphics division from AMD with of course an iron-clad agreement to share IP between both companies well into the future.

Of course I do not know enough about Intel and AMD or the graphics business in general to claim to know how far off base my statement might be but you do see this type of scenario playing out all the time in different technological corners. So if this were to happen I wouldn't be surprised.

Intel has incredible resources compared to AMD. This can only be good for the consumer long term. nVidia in all their wisdom remains a high cost part be it laptops or the desktop. Take away the performance gap and this becomes a non issue. There's a reason why you don't find nVidia inside Nintendo, Xbox or PS4 .... simply put, cost.

The reason I was Team Red for a good 5 years was they positioned themselves as nearly having the same performance as nVidia at a 3rd of the cost. I'm ok with 2nd best if I can save a good $150+ dollars which is what I did with AMD at the very least year after year. I did this from around 2009 til about mid 2014 when I just couldn't do it anymore. I finally had to go with the performance champ nVidia. My last AMD card was the R9 290x which I bought day one.

Had AMD remained in this position performance wise I do not think he would have made the move. I'm sure he is frustrated at the current gap in performance between AMD and nVidia. I think there is a lot more to this story.
 
IMO AMD exists as a going concern because Intel and nVidia allow it. They will never be close to dominant and they will never be a leader. They don’t have the funding. They are the hedge against anti-trust actions.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Intel has incredible resources compared to AMD. This can only be good for the consumer long term. nVidia in all their wisdom remains a high cost part be it laptops or the desktop. Take away the performance gap and this becomes a non issue. There's a reason why you don't find nVidia inside Nintendo, Xbox or PS4 .... simply put, cost.
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The Switch uses a Tegra X1. The reason MS and Sony went with AMD is not just cost it's also that Nvidia simply doesn't compete with AMD's APUs. Nvidia cannot make x86 chips, they have absolutely no way to compete in that market. APUs were the best option for the consoles at the time they were being designed, especially as Sony and MS were able to work with AMD while Jaguar was being made and make sure it fit their needs. For x86 based consoles AMD's APUs are the best option right now. If new consoles are only two years away like Ubisoft believes it will be interesting to see if both continue with AMD APUs or if they will go a different direction and return to having separate CPU and GPU chips.
 
Iching said:
The last thing you want is a decent GPU from Intel. They'll bleed you dry like a vampire.
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... I never said I wanted an Intel GPU. I only want them to make competitive GPU's so that other brands are forced to innovate more and lower prices. You do understand that when there is only one major company in an industry that they drive pricing, right? Nvidia is not going to offer you better value unless they have a reason to.
 
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Derangel said:
The Switch uses a Tegra X1. The reason MS and Sony went with AMD is not just cost it's also that Nvidia simply doesn't compete with AMD's APUs. Nvidia cannot make x86 chips, they have absolutely no way to compete in that market. APUs were the best option for the consoles at the time they were being designed, especially as Sony and MS were able to work with AMD while Jaguar was being made and make sure it fit their needs. For x86 based consoles AMD's APUs are the best option right now. If new consoles are only two years away like Ubisoft believes it will be interesting to see if both continue with AMD APUs or if they will go a different direction and return to having separate CPU and GPU chips.
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I agree. Not only was AMD the best choice at the time, they were the ONLY choice. PPC was dead by then (both the Xbox360 and PS3 relied quite a bit on PPC ISA), IBM was very touchy about licensing its POWER CPUs (not to mention getting out of the HW business), ARM was nowhere near ready, and Intel is Intel.



For the people who think Intel will somehow be the value player or even driving value... lol. Amusingly, with the odd TSMC-Samsung "connection," Nvidia is coming to rely more and more on the old "IBM-GF-SAMSUNG" network as TSMC flounders. Will Nvidia become the new ATi in 10 years? Probably. Where does that leave the real ATi? Probably dead, IMO. Not enough space for 3 players.
 
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