Tuesday, March 21st 2023
Raja Koduri, Executive Vice President & Chief Architect, Leaves Intel
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has issued the news, via a tweet, of Raja Koduri's departure from the silicon giant. Koduri, who currently sits as Executive Vice President and Chief Architect, will be leaving the company at the end of this month. This ends a five year long tenure at Intel, where he started as Chief Architect back in 2017. He intends to form a brand new startup operation that will focus on AI-generative software for computer games. His tweeted reply to Gelsinger reads: "Thank you Pat and Intel for many cherished memories and incredible learning over the past 5 years. Will be embarking on a new chapter in my life, doing a software startup as noted below. Will have more to share in coming weeks."
Intel has been undergoing numerous internal restructures, and Koduri's AXG Graphics Unit was dissolved late last year. He was the general manager of the graphic chips division prior to its split, and returned to his previous role as Chief Architect at Intel. The company stated at the time that Koduri's new focus would be on: "growing efforts across CPU, GPU and AI, and accelerating high-priority technical programmes."
Raja Koduri oversaw the development and release of Intel's Arc Alchemist GPU series - its own answer to rivals Nvidia and AMD in the much contested discrete graphic card market. The two companies have faced little competition outside of their own long running duel, only to have Intel pitch in at the 25-year mark with its A380, A750 and A770 models. The Arc project has gone through many technical setbacks and delays, and the resultant products launched to a mixed reception in October 2022. The company has been battling to boost the reputation of its Alchemist GPUs, in the face of rumors about a total cancellation of the undertaking. Numerous firmware and software fixes have been issued since Arc's debut, and aggressive price cuts have been deployed in recent weeks.
Koduri served stints at Apple and AMD prior to taking on executive positions at Intel. He was at the forefront of transforming AMD's Radeon Technology Group, with the development of its Polaris, Vega and Navi architectures. These core graphics technologies would boost AMD's fortunes, as their hardware was implemented into a wider range of PCs, Apple Macs and multiple generations of home gaming consoles.
Source:
Raja Koduri Tweet
Intel has been undergoing numerous internal restructures, and Koduri's AXG Graphics Unit was dissolved late last year. He was the general manager of the graphic chips division prior to its split, and returned to his previous role as Chief Architect at Intel. The company stated at the time that Koduri's new focus would be on: "growing efforts across CPU, GPU and AI, and accelerating high-priority technical programmes."
65 Comments on Raja Koduri, Executive Vice President & Chief Architect, Leaves Intel
he was fired.
I guess Intel is taking her chances now.
It's hard to pin it just on him, but this type of thing seems to follow him where he goes, so it's probably the culture he cultivates with his team.
ARC graphics didn't get disbanded for poor performance, ARC got disbanded for lying to management.
I think he got shown the door. Reasons? Well there are plenty. And if you are an grognard like me you knew about this man and his... actions???
heh heh heh :peace:
arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/03/are-robloxs-new-ai-coding-and-art-tools-the-future-of-game-development/
"In an example Corazza presented at the conference, a user could ask the system to "make orb turn red and destroy after 0.3 seconds when player touches it." The system then generates a seven-line Lua function that does just that, based on a coder-defined orb object provided earlier in the code.
Another prompt for a function to "create a 3 by 3 grid of orbs around orb" similarly generates a few lines of code to place a small grid of those objects in the game scene."
in short, he will ask ChatGPT for ideas/concepts on how to do that for games?
i wonder how big/exaggerated his promise will be, this time.
Guess we'll see
Looking at AMD, his cycle involved Hawaii, Tonga, Fiji, Polaris and Vega until he got the boot. All of them missed their performance targets big time, but they did set the foundation for current AMD graphics. Say whatever you want about raytracing, but current AMD options are completely competitive.
If Intel execs have any brains, they shouldn't kill Arc graphics. But for that to succeed it would take at least two more generations working over Raja's designs until they can rework it without his bias.
As I posted earlier, I believe Arc will be cancelled after the Alchemist refresh.
So yeah, there was plenty of room for sarcasm in that post, a missed opportunity.